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Evolution Of The Wellness Program

Decent Essays

The wellness programs that many companies now seem to be interested in is nothing new, as companies have known for many years that a healthy and fit employee is a more productive employee. This company interest in fit employees can be traced back to the time right after World War II. After WWII a few companies decided to construct gyms and staffed them with instructors to help in the promotion of fitness (Sparling 2010), (Chenoweth 2011), (Miller 2014). These gyms were perks typically for upper management and had little effect on the health behaviors or the health care for the majority of the employees. These types of programs continued to grow throughout the 1970s with limited influence because of their focus on upper management but …show more content…

Companies have identified the need for a wellness program to help in this endeavor. Companies also need a means to identify the performance and cost of this wellness program. Just as organizations have used the fundamental concepts of cost measurement and recognition to provide the past, present and future performance and cost (Crosson, and Needles, 2014).
Historical programs have proven that without proper performance measurements and being properly budgeted not just a wellness program but all programs are doomed to fail.
A company wellness program must have performance measures system that will monitor both the operating results and the multiple performance measurements that are needed to identify the return on investment (ROI), residual income (RI), and economic value added (EVA) (Crosson, and Needles, 2014). This will only provide a short-term performance measurement of the wellness program and would require an understanding of the wellness program stakeholders to provide a more balanced view of the program. During the planning phase of a company’s wellness program, there is the need to identify a company’s vision and strategy for the wellness program.
At the beginning of any program, there needs to be an initial evaluation of the current conditions and or status. By establishing a baseline of the health of your employees will provide the

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