It turns out that businesses don’t tend to do very well when their employees aren’t happy, engaged and healthy. But for many companies, the actual health of their employees is something of an afterthought. Sure, it’s nice to have people on your team who are fitness buffs, but what difference does that make, really?
It turns out that very few businesses in America have wellness programs. According to a survey conducted by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, only around 7 percent of companies in 2008 had something in place designed to promote employee well-being – “something” being the operative word. Thus, those 7 percent weren’t even doing a full wellness program: they were just doing little things that might be considered health-promoting.
What’s so amazing about all of this is that, given how few companies are promoting wellness, doing so potentially offers some pretty significant competitive advantage. Those companies who put together a team of healthy employees are more like to be productive and are less likely to take sick leave. In fact, there’s a lot of science out there to promote this notion. A review of over 62 studies investigating the link between employee wellness programs and outcomes for businesses in the American Journal of Health Promotion, found that companies that instituted wellness programs saw a 25 percent fall in sick leave, worker’s compensation and health expenses. Another study, this time from Harvard, suggested that companies that promoted health among their employees saw an annual increase in health costs of just 1.5 percent, compared to over 7 percent for businesses that didn’t bother.
So what can companies do?
Tip 1: Make The Work Environment Health Conscious
The first thing that companies need to do is to make the working environment as health-conscious as possible. According to Ron Goetzel, a professor at Emory University, food should be the first thing on company’s target list. He says that it needs to be both healthy and appealing, as well as affordable and accurately labelled.
Max PixelThe physical and social environment should also be supportive and prepared for emergencies, says Laura Linnan, the woman behind the Chapel Hill study. This means that companies need to find AEDs for sale just in case employees have cardiovascular problems on site, as well as including signage that helps employees make better decisions so that they avoid suffering any cardiac events.
Tip 2: Ensure Wellness Is A Part Of The Company Structure
One of the reasons why employees end up coming down sick has to do with the stresses at work, Linnan says. The work culture itself pushes people to begin habits that are bad for them, like drinking and smoking, This, in turn, makes it more likely that they will experience some health episode at work that will mean that they have to take costly time off. According to the CDC, wellness programs should be integrated into everything a company does. This includes offering adequate support to staff at all levels, as well as making sure that no employee has to choose between a healthy lifestyle and success at work.
