Posted by Company Wellness | Posted in Company Wellness, Wellness Programs | Posted on 12-08-2010
The Partnership for Prevention was formed to encourage Fortune 1000 companies to consider making workforce health a CEO issue and adopt strategies to promote avoidance and wellness.
After several years of double-digit rate increases for health insurance, corporations are realizing that one of the best ways to slow the cost increases is to have staff take more responsibility for both costs and health choices.
A majority of companies surveyed feel that the best way for decreasing costs is financial incentives to encourage workers to adopt healthier life choices.
Almost 100 percent of businesss surveyed say that medical costs will be a crucial or significant concern over the next five years, as reported by a recent survey by United Benefit Advisors.
More corporations are adopting higher deductible healthcare plans with HRA’s or HSA’S, health promotion programs, and broader disease management programs for control ever-increasing health care costs.
Failure to deal with these issues could be disastrous for an corporation. Wayne Sensor, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Alegent Health lately stated, “I think that we’ve built a healthcare machinery we can’t afford. I think we’re choking the economic engine of America.”
In his October 2005 newsletter, Dr. Andrew Weil stated, “I think rising health- care costs are becoming the major economic issue in our nation”. Obesity costs California corporations billions of dollars each year.
Projected costs for 2005 may reach 28 billion dollars for direct and indirect healthcare costs, employee’s compensation, and lost productivity. California has experienced among the fastest growing rates of obesity of any state.
According to California Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Belshe, “The obesity epidemic is more than a public health crisis, it’s an economic crisis.” What’s frightening is that most individuals don’t even realize that they are obese, which is defined as only 20% above normal weight.
There is a great need for additional education on weight and resulting diseases, and the worksite is an ideal venue. Wellness education and programs can result in a significant return on investment and, when structured properly, can produce results in a very short period of time.
Despite the fact that many businesss have attempted some form of health promotion program in the past, results from those efforts have been disappointing.
In many cases, the healthier staff members participated for incentives, such as gym memberships, but those who needed it most did not take benefit of the health promotion program in a meaningful way.
Businesses are looking at ways to encourage more workforce to purchase into the wellness movement.
A recent webinar hosted by Human Resource (HR) Executive Magazine and presented by Carlson Marketing Group titled, “Healthier Employees; Healthier Bottom Line – Engaging Employees is the Missing Link in Managing Healthcare Costs,” drove this point home.
This session provided actionable advice on how corporations are achieving higher impact with their wellness investments by focusing on staff member engagement. It also highlighted how you can create an Economic Engagement Model to forecast the potential impact for your company.
Corporations can simply no longer ignore the issue of their employee’s unhealthy lifestyles and must take action to engage them in a meaningful wellness program to reduce health care costs, absenteeism and lost productivity.
Workers also benefit as they derive better health and greater satisfaction in both their personal and professional lives. The alternative is being caught in a non-competitive position and severely impacting the bottom-line of the corporation.