Investment in Employee Wellness Pays Big Dividends
High rates of employee turnover and the expenditures of sick days are increasingly taking bites into business profits. The high cost of recruitment programs only adds to the challenges that these concerns in total cost the average business. Many corporations are finding the solution to these challenges by increasing job satisfaction, team building, and the implementation of programs that provide a decrease in these expenditures.
It has become increasingly clear to most managers that a well designed wellness program / exercise program with a strong nutritional and fitness lifestyle emphasis will directly meet this need. Upper Management’s objectives and goals for a advantageous wellness program must be viewed through the perspective of increased employee work rate, diminished absenteeism due to health related causes, improved employee morale, diminished utilisation of business subsidised health benefits, enhanced group cohesion and performance and a decline in turnover due to lack of job satisfaction. It is obvious that an improvement in any of these areas will have a positive effect on the monetary status of any organisation.
The benefits from an employees point of view can be seen in improved health, increased energy levels, diminished body fat, a more youthful fit body, an increased ability to handle work related stress, greater feelings of confidence and morale and more social associations at work contributing to greater feelings of satisfaction with their work and workplace.
To be most advantageous a wellness program needs to achieve both management’s and employee’s objectives and goals, and this can be accomplished through a program that will support the individual employee with an awareness of their current physical condition and attitudes to fitness and wellbeing, and the benefits of attaining a fitter, healthier lifestyle, and a plan that will allow them to achieve the crucial changes to their physical condition that can be applied in the context of their life and work.
The Bottom Line – Employee Wellness
Diminished Absenteeism – Dupont reduced absenteeism by 47.5 percent over six years for the participants of their business fitness program, (Health Behaviour, March 1992).
Diminished Health Care Expenditures – Steel case showed a decrease in medical claim expenditures of 55 percent for corporate exercise program participants over non-participants over a six year period – an average of $478.61 for participants vs. non-participants who averaged $868.88, (The Am. Journal of Health Promotion, Sept/Oct, 1991).
Diminished Turnover – Turnover among exercise program participants at the Canadian Life Assurance Company was 32.4 percent lower over a seven year period compared with non-participants (Canadian Journal of Public Health, Jan/Feb, 1988).
Positive Return on Investment – Blue Cross Blue Shield of Indiana observed that its business exercise program had a 250 percent return on investment; $2.51 for every $1 invested over a five year period (American Journal of Health Promotion, March, April, 1991).
