The 6 Best Reasons to Implement a Corporate Wellness Program

Corporate Wellness programs are gaining popularity worldwide. Wellness programs are common among different sized businesses. When done correctly, wellness programs give employees incentives, tools, social support, privacy, and strategies to adopt and maintain healthy behaviour. Dr Martin Combrinck, CEO of Sanga Wellness in South Africa, shares with News on Sunday the main features of his wellness program, a concept he will soon introduce in Mauritius.

Think of the different benefits employers typically offer, for example, a retirement or pension plan, healthcare, paid time off, or maternity leave. These are designed to help your organisation recruit and maintain qualified employees. Yet, there is not a single published study that shows that offering these benefits as any measurable effect on it worksite’s ability to recruit or maintain workers.

Now consider a workable wellness program. Unlike all the other benefits your worksite offers, corporate wellness programs have been studied for decades. There are enormous amounts of very solid data that show the benefits of having a wellness program.

The Top 6 Reasons to Have a Wellness Program

1) Wellness Programs Improve Employee Health Behaviours
The core of every good wellness program is behavior change. Wellness programs are good at helping people adopt and maintain healthy behaviours. This is perhaps the biggest benefit of having a wellness program. Healthy behaviours lead to lower health risks, and lower health risks lead to less chronic disease.  With less chronic disease, employees have fewer health care costs. Most wellness studies show the employees have better health behaviours, for example, they eat healthier foods, they exercise more, they smoke and drink less, they are less depressed and they’re pretty good at controlling their stress.

2) Wellness Programs Reduce Elevated Health Risks
The foundation of any good wellness program must be focused on helping employees adopt healthy behaviours. Elevated blood glucose, high blood cholesterol, and high blood pressure are almost all caused by unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity. Eating and exercising are behaviours. Low health risks are the foundation of good health, and wellness programs are a great way to help employees and their spouses avoid elevated health risks.

3) Wellness Programs Reduce Health Care Costs
There are almost 100 different studies that have looked at the financial impact of wellness programs. The ability of a wellness program to reduce healthcare costs depends upon how effective the program really is. Comprehensive worksite wellness programs that improve employee behaviours will see a bending of the healthcare cost trend. Researchers from Harvard University recently published a summary of wellness ROI research.

Among the 22 different studies that looked at wellness programs and healthcare costs, the average return on investment was 3.27. This means that for every US dollar that was spent on the program the company saved $3.27 because of reduced healthcare costs.

4) Wellness Programs Improve Productivity
Poor employee productivity can be defined as physically being at work but not working and this is called presenteeism. It is estimated that the cost associated with presenteeism due to poor employee health is at least 2 to 3 times greater than direct health care expenses. Wellness programs that focus on helping employees have good health behaviours will eventually have an impact on productivity.

5) Wellness Programs Can Decrease Absenteeism
There are over 50 papers that have looked at the connections between worksite wellness programs and reduced absenteeism. Wellness programs have the ability to improve employee health and this can have an impact on whether or not individuals are absent from work. Employees who have high morale are significantly less likely to be absent from work.

6) Wellness Programs Can Help Improve Employee Recruitment and Retention
Wellness programs do have a strong impact on retention. Retention is the ability a worksite has to retain its workforce.  A Virgin HealthMiles/Workforce survey did find that about 87% of employees said they consider health and wellness offerings when choosing an employer. The employees are the most important asset in every organisation. When you offer your employees a wellness program, you are showing them that you care about them.

BIO

Dr Martin Combrinck is the CEO of Sanga Wellness in South Africa. He is a Corporate Wellness Architect, involved with the planning, implementing and sustaining of Workplace Wellness programs in Africa. For more information: www.sangawellness.com

The Bottom Line

There is an enormous amount of research to support the benefits of wellness. A comprehensive corporate wellness program is going to improve employee health and improve your organisation’s bottom line. It is not going to make all your problems go away, but it is going to help you create a worksite culture of health. It will boost and maintain employee morale.

With an effective wellness program you will improve the lives of your employees and help drive the success of your organisation.