Summary: Analyzing Employee Wellness Programs

An employee can help reduce the cost of health cost by doing several things. There has been an outcry from organizations due to the rising number of competitors with high expenses catering for health benefits during employment periods and on retiring. The employee can be of great help by being participative in the programs set by their employers to benefit more from other advantages far from health costs (Kerzner, 2013). Some of the choices an employee may consider to help control health costs are by boosting consumerism, use technology to manage benefits, and indulge in fitness and health programs.

Employee health and wellness definition. According to Chenoweth (n. d.) “the health status of your employees directly influences their work behavior, attendance and on-the-job performance . . . improving employee well-being will result in a more productive workforce” (p. 1). The purpose of an employee wellness program is to promote healthier employees who because they are healthy are happier more productive employees (Danna & Griffin, 1999). Wellness programs have positive outcomes for both the employer and the employee (Danna & Griffin, 1999). According to Chenoweth (n. d.) “for wellness initiatives to succeed, they must be an intrinsic part of an organization’s culture” (p. 1).

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

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

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.

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).

It has recently come to my attention that there are talks of cutting the wellness program here at Dynamic Wellness Center. Should this program be cut there will be a direct negative impact on the employees within the company. With the shift in the composition of the work force our company will need to stay up to date with competitors in attracting qualified employees. The following summarizes what factors prompt the need for a Workplace Wellness Program, the results are program is obtaining, and ways the program can improve and become more cost effective.

Optum. (2013). Optum research study: Reducing health risks with corporate wellness programs. White Paper. Retrieved from http://www.optum.co.uk/content/dam/optum/resources/whitePapers/091913-ORC-health-risk-reduction-study.pdf

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

Steps can include enrolling in a weight-management program and reducing body mass index (Wieczner, 2013). Employers usually give employees about $100 for reaching a healthy weight (Wieczner, 2013). Employees appreciate progress-based incentives because it motivates them to improve their health instead of being penalized for not meeting a healthy weight. However, employers should understand that there can be complex reasons why an employee is over-weight or obese therefore, even progress-based incentives may not be enough to make an employee reach a healthy weight. Lastly, employers used targeted incentives to encourage healthy behavior. Employers or insurance companies crunch employees’ health-risk, claims and other data to offer personalized wellness programs and incentives to employees (Wieczner, 2013). Incentives typically range from $100 to $125. The programs are personalized to increase participation among those who will benefit the most, however some employees may feel personalized interventions are intrusive and compromise their privacy (Wieczner, 2013). As a result, employers should survey employees before including targeted incentives in its wellness

In this era of increasing awareness and concern about the exorbitant cost of healthcare, employers have begun to apply cost-mitigation strategies to reduce the total costs of their employee health insurance policies. Some of the more typical approaches include establishing general policies and formal plans to reduce healthcare expenses, such as by promoting employee participation in their optimum health. Many employers now provide financial incentives such as by rewarding employees for participating in health awareness surveys and for signing up for health management plans. In principle, the purpose of these mechanisms is to raise health consciousness and motivate employees to participate more directly in their own health management to reduce the cost necessary to treat unmanaged diseases that could have been prevented or addressed earlier in their course of development. Many employers are also encouraging their employees to take advantage of the lower-priced consumer directed health care (CDHC) plans that both provide additional incentive and allow individuals to help control the costs of their health care services by saving the funds remaining in their annual funds at the end of the year.

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.