Wellness Programs in the Workplace

Allow employees to register for company-sponsored classes and programs to help them manage their weight, reduce stress, stop smoking, and manage other health

Employers are continuing to face rising health benefit costs and are constantly looking for alternatives to control these escalating costs. Health benefit premiums continue to increase at a double digit pace for employers and employees (Poor, Ross & Tollen, 2004). This escalation is putting environmental pressures on all impacted stakeholders. Companies and insurance providers are squeezing this industry to get a handle on cost while still providing an appropriate level of care. This cycle puts the patient front and center as the ultimate stakeholder who incurs changes in health benefits. This mandate of cost control, efficient operations and market share has facilitated a constant analysis of the dynamic health

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

The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, with the intent of ensuring that most people in the United States have medical insurance. With this new healthcare system came the responsibility that individuals would have to take initiatives in an effort to stay healthy or at the least, increase their level of activity and health awareness, making them more responsible for their own wellness. The preventative care portion included in the Affordable Care Act is one of the fundamental items of the law and is a particularly meaningful, very positive attribute in health care reform for the American people. Wellness in the workplace has become an essential 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 achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle. With the rising cost of healthcare, especially relating to people not taking care of their bodies, wellness in the workplace has become even more critical. Author Lori Breiner (2007) “believes wellness in the workplace has economic benefits for organizations, because if workers are healthy, they miss less time from work.” Breiner’s theory would suggest that better health increases productivity and profits in the workplace.

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.

Preventable causes of illnesses like smoking and obesity were left unaddressed, depleting precious resources and increasing costs of care. From the patient perspective, cost sharing measures for preventive services like deductibles, copayments, and coinsurance deterred individuals from undergoing essential preventive services like cancer screening, immunization, and counselling. Ultimately, $277 billion dollars were spent on treating illnesses which could have been prevented by broad based prevention programs, and we incurred a loss of $1.1 trillion dollars due to lost productivity as a result of chronic illnesses.

Foremost, the healthier a society is, the more productive employees are, which boosts revenue. When an employee’s health is in question, an employer may actually lose 77 percent of productivity, making the loss greater than that of health care expenses. These numbers go up with the combination of lack of exercise, 96 percent loss, and unhealthy eating habits, 93 percent loss, said a study from Brigham Young University, according to an article in a 2012 Education Letter. The study included “those who did not believe their workplace environment would support them in becoming physically and emotionally healthier were more likely to

Lynn Ostrowski believes that if patients would take control over their own health by preventative measures and diet, it could cut down on the need of seeing a doctor. She says, ‘Seventy percent of chronic conditions are the direct result of people’s own life choices,’ (1). She suggests that much of the preventative-health measures would be best promoted in the workplace (3). People consume most of their daily intake of calories at work, during the workday. And for most people this is the part of the day where they are least active. Ostrowski states that workplaces have a unique position in helping create healthy employees and families, because they pay for insurance and lose productivity due to sickness or disability (3). She

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).

The new affordable healthcare reform has been delayed until 2015/2016. This mandate requires employers with 50 or more full time employees to provide health insurance or pay a per month "Employer Shared Responsibility Payment" on their federal tax return (Pyne, 2013). This has employers concerned about continued increases in healthcare cost. This cost increase provides an incentive to create new innovative solutions toward healthcare services. One solution that has been gaining traction is the use of preventive care. Preventive care involves a healthy lifestyle from nutrition, exercise and frequent visit to healthcare facilities for health monitoring. Monitoring provides the means to identify issues early so that less costly health services will be required to resolve.

Diabetes, heart disease, cancer, eating disorders, obesity, asthma, types of Dementia, and arthritis are only a few types of chronic diseases.

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 and wellness in the work place is a vital part to a company’s success. Employees who are healthier and more productive are less likely to call out from sickness. There are not many companies that have affordable health care coverage for employees. More companies should make healthcare affordable for their employees and their family. Research has been done on how effective health and wellness programs can be in the workplace. Throughout the reading these points will be discussed. The effectiveness of health and wellness in the workplace will also be spoken of. Health and wellness activities in the workplace will be a positive move for companies and employees.

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.