Mckesson Corporate Wellness

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

The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, with the intent of ensuring that most people in the United States have medical insurance. With this new healthcare system came the responsibility that individuals would have to take initiatives in an effort to stay healthy or at the least, increase their level of activity and health awareness, making them more responsible for their own wellness. The preventative care portion included in the Affordable Care Act is one of the fundamental items of the law and is a particularly meaningful, very positive attribute in health care reform for the American people. Wellness in the workplace has become an essential 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 achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle. With the rising cost of healthcare, especially relating to people not taking care of their bodies, wellness in the workplace has become even more critical. Author Lori Breiner (2007) “believes wellness in the workplace has economic benefits for organizations, because if workers are healthy, they miss less time from work.” Breiner’s theory would suggest that better health increases productivity and profits in the workplace.

Share with your colleagues, your experience working with, or been impacted by a worksite wellness program. How did the experience impact your health?

General Motors knows that healthy lifestyles are a great thing for their employees. The LifeSteps program has produced more than a million health risk appraisals. This has helped in reducing over 370 thousand health risk. This was all accomplished by introducing the productive plan to their employees. They continue to have this type of impact as they offer these onsite fairs, screenings, and wellness programs.

Health in the United States has become a serious issue. With about six in every 10 people suffering from either being overweight or obese in addition to other unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, heavy drinking or lack of exercise. These lifestyle choices have caused a number of chronic illnesses to skyrocket to high rates. “These chronic conditions have become a major burden, as they lead to decreased quality of life, premature death and disability, and increased health care cost” (pg xiii). What the workplace is trying to do is promote a healthier lifestyle for the employee. Some reasons for doing so is that the employer cares about the well being of their employee so that they can be more productive and to help reduce the risk of getting a chronic disease. Since these chronic diseases are becoming more life threatening and the cost of health care is increasing the employers are implementing health promotion and disease prevention strategies also known as workplace wellness programs. “Workplace wellness takes advantages of employers’ access to employees at an age when interventions can still change their long-term health trajectory. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act supports this trend with several provisions regarding health promotion and also mandated this study” (pg xiii).

Unfortunately, the sample size was too small to show a better outcome of an overall total population. Being that around 600 employees are employed at this facility, having five participants shows that 0.8% of the work population will be affected by intervention. While data is still low for this intervention, continued research will need to be done on this intervention program to see if have a wellness program in this workplace will be effective. It is still with all hope that when the second intervention course begins that more participants will step forward and better results will present

Wellness in the workplace needs to be taken seriously by all employers, and employees. There has been evidence that making sure employees eat healthier leads to lower call out rates and more savings on health plans. In an article in Employee Benefits magazine it states that “Wellness management does not need to be complicated, or costly. A few simple steps could help to mitigate long-term problems, such as introducing early intervention activities that red flag cases identified via an absence reporting mechanism, the proactive management of musculo-skeletal conditions and stress, introducing a smoking cessation program or running regular health wellbeing days. “Workplace wellness as a concept has been used extensively in recent years by management in business and industry, health professionals, fitness experts, and others. This is a policy that should be implanted in all jobs. Wellness may not

Some employers suggest wellness programs to help educate staff on healthy living and lifestyles. These programs usually incorporate health topics such as managing blood pressure, weight control and management, stress management, healthy eating, cholesterol management, cancer prevention, and exercise programs. Instructing the basics is an excellent way to start the workforce on a healthy lifestyle (Lotich, 2011).

According to workers, organizations with significant wellness programs remain a minority. Demographic evidence suggests that the current laissez-faire attitudes toward workplace wellness found in many organizations will soon need to change. It's important to understand those needs to tailor a wellness program to the organization and its people. To be successful, wellness programs must be employee driven and management supported. (Walker, 2004)

I think creating ways to incorporate a health and wellness program into the corporate workplace will be very beneficial to a company. The research shows that incorporating a health and wellness program into the corporate workplace will increase productivity, create higher morale, improve employee decision making & creativity, lower disability claims, and healthcare costs, and attract and retain other healthy employees (E3 Consulting Corporation, 2014). This research provided the inspiration on creating a corporate wellness business for the workplace. I can see a lot of potential in this area for a

My company, for example, will soon begin open annual enrollment for benefits. During this time all employees are offered the chance to discount their portion of health care costs by participating in wellness activities. These activities include, blood pressure screening, cholesterol screenings, weight and measurements as well as a survey to determine our habits. The company doesn’t demand that a person lose weight or watch what they eat. However, they do offer resources to help maintain your health.

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

There are many benefits to having a strong Wellness Program in the workplace. We can all go round and round as far as what makes the most sense, and the importance of ROI and saving the company money. However, I feel we lose really what is truly important. Our employees their overall health and the importance of work/life balance. Somewhere down the line companies lost this process. If it became about company survival, making money and keeping their heads above water. They soon found while the company may still be surviving, their employees were sinking. This is how and where workplace wellness programs came into play. In the abstract, Do Workplace Health Promotion (Wellness) Programs Work? They found that they really do. The point I want to get across is it wasn’t just about the ROI where they saw the positive numbers it was about the positive health outcomes as well.

Individual behavior and lifestyle choices such as poor diet, sedentary lifestyle, and tobacco use have presented the largest impact on the development of chronic conditions. Moreover, a high calorie diet combined with low physical activity commonly leads to excessive body weight which in turn causes obesity. Obesity is the main contributor of type II diabetes, congestive heart failure, stoke, and hypertension. Tobacco use, also contributes to these same diseases as well as cancer. Furthermore, many companies have begun developing wellness programs as a way of conquering the loss of dollars in employee illnesses and absenteeism. As stated in ROI-based Analysis of Employee Wellness Programs (2007 2). "In reality, companies that have effectively developed a wellness culture also realize cost savings in reference to retention, recruitment, reputation and employee “presenteeism”