Analysis Of The Wellness Program

This Harvard Business Review case is about the company Vitality Health Enterprise. The new CEO, Beth Williams brought in new ideas to revitalize the company and launch it into a new era of growth. The company switched over to relative performance grading from an absolute one. The case give clear insights of the pros and cons of both the systems. The satisfaction for some employees were a reason of discontent for others.

The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 to make sure that most people had medical insurance. With this new healthcare system came the responsibility that individuals would have to take initiatives to try to stay or get healthy. The preventative care portion included in the Affordable Car Act is a big item and very important in health care reform and very positive for the American people. Wellness in the workplace has become a very important issue to help reduce companies medical cost, and to help employees get on track to know their numbers, get healthy, and have a positive healthy mental attitude. Many employees do not understand or know how to get healthy and live a healthy lifestyle. With the rising cost of healthcare relating to

In order to improve healthcare nationally and cut cost spending, preventative care and wellness should be at the fore front of every healthcare organization. Recommendations to emphasize preventative and wellness services include building a workplace that support healthy lifestyles, expand the roles of advanced providers, and expand preventative services at no cost.

Communicating to employees regarding launching a new Wellness Program in the workplace can be tricky. Sometimes companies may have wellness programs however,

Xxx utilized wellness programs to promote healthy behaviors (McCarthy & Klein, 2010, p. 3). These wellness programs reduced the need for expensive acute and specialty care.

General motors have a great wellness program that keeps their workforce healthy. They use a program called LifeSteps which helps employees identify controllable health risk.

When people think of health in America, common sicknesses like cardiovascular disease and cancer come to mind. Although these sicknesses are very usual, yet serious diseases, they are definitely not the only health issues prevalent in America today. Organizations such as the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) work to ensure nationwide health promotion of all diseases. In 1979, the Department of Health, Education & Labor initially created the Healthy People program as a standard for disease prevention goals across the US. In its initial printing, the Healthy People program exhibited a "ten-year plan to reduce controllable health risks". In January 2000, Healthy People 2010 was established by the HHS as "a set of health objectives for the Nation to achieve over the first decade of the new century." With 467 specific objectives clustered into 28 focus areas, the 2010 program was implemented to reach all people and health issues across the United States. Of those 28 areas, 10 were considered 'Leading Health Indicators' which served as reflections of the major health

Best health practices and worksite wellness program is about engaging with employees to understand what they want, taking a tactical method about looking at health holistically. According to Lacoma, (1999 -2014), these worksite wellness programs are intended to help the workers upgrade their health and maintain healthy lifestyles. This package includes exercises, variety of care and treatment for various illnesses (mental and emotional health), healthy food, on time check up reminders, outlined health checks assessments, consultations and therapy. Moreover, Engelman (2012) determined that many of the conditions impacting workers were preventable and requires increased amounts of education, screening, encouragement and benefits to help understand how these affect the quality of their lives. These shifts gained prominence during the 1990s from increased research, about the importance of prevention and the advantages it can provide employers inside the marketplace.The recent Affordable Care Act workplace wellness provisions on implementation and expansion of employer wellness programs serves a great means to offer great opportunity of improving the citizen 's health and also control health care spending. The effectiveness and benefits of such programs should be evaluated to encourage opportunities to support healthier workplaces (Kisberg, (2014).

“Program sustainability or survival is increasingly recognized as an important outcome of health programs. Substantial resources are often committed to community-based health programs, yet programs are often short- lived” (Mermelstein, Sporer, Emery & Curry, 2009). For maintaining a viable health promotion program it is very important to understand the different factors that will affect the sustainability of the program. “Planning for sustainability requires, first, a clear understanding of the concept of sustainability and operational indicators that may be used in monitoring sustainability over time. Important categories of indicators include: (1) maintenance of health benefits achieved through an initial program, (2) level of institutionalization

In the vending machines all sorts of dried nuts and fruits can be found. For those employees who would like to lose weight, the company offers to pay the membership fee for the gym. With these type of helpful gestures employees will certainly stay healthy. “Companies are expected to spend an estimated $7,720 per employee this estimate is up from the $7,211 a few years ago according to NBGH. With health-care costs expected to continue to rise and cash-strapped employees less able to shoulder more premium increases, employers face a dilemma.”(Marshall P.53)

Research indicates that employers can increase employee retention, increase employee productivity, and reduce employee healthcare costs by implementing a workplace wellness program.

Setting the stage for starting a workplace-based wellness program will be the most difficult part. The program can be achieved by getting upper management support and forming a wellness/health services unit to help plan, promote, implement and maintain the program.

Health and wellness in the workplace is crucial to business success. Increasingly, it is recognized that the workplace itself has a powerful affect on people’s health. When people are satisfied with their job, they are more productive and tend to be healthier. When employees feel that the environment at work is negative, they feel stressed. Stress has a large impact on employee mental and physical health, and in turn, on productivity. Companies that promote healthy lifestyle habits for employees to improve their health, often take the success of the company to heart and are likely to be absent less often for health related reasons.

Healthy Body Wellness Center is an organization that specializes in awarding grants to hospitals. To make it more appealing, they also strive to ensure that these grants are of good quality. Thus, a great deal of emphasis is placed on improving the quality of these grants. For this they evaluate and share the results of federally sponsored research. Their main recipients are small hospitals and these grants are tracked by SHGTS.

In the article, there are six options what company can do to help their employees to stay healthy and at the same time cut their costs.