According to a study, 81% of large employers and 49% of small employers offer wellness programs to their employees. Aimed to improve employees’ overall well-being, these programs are often centered around weight loss, smoking cessation, and walking.
Why is it important to promote wellness in the workplace?
Wellness affects your company’s bottom line in many ways—in particular, it can lower health care costs, increase productivity, decrease absenteeism and raise employee morale.
Employees with health risk factors, such as being overweight or smoking, can directly impact insurance costs. In turn, those employees will pay more for health care than employees with fewer risk factors. Wellness can help employees with high risk factors make the lifestyle changes to improve their quality of life and reduce their health care costs, while also helping employees with fewer risk factors stay healthy.
What are the benefits of a wellness program?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) promotes the formation of workplace wellness programs because, according to one of its studies, employees in companies with “a strong culture of health” are three times more likely to actively strive to improve their health.
In addition, wellness programs have shown to directly:
- Control health insurance costs
- Reduce Workers’ Compensation and disability costs
- Increase employee productivity and absenteeism
- Enhance morale and improve recruiting
Read more about the value a wellness program can provide on your organization and how to lower your insurance costs, or contact Shay Sherfinski.