Risky health behaviors by staff members cost a company. Changing those behaviors can save the employer money and raise the staff member’s productivity.

Because work gives an staff member a stable setting and support system, Corporate Wellness Programs can have a great impact on lowering high-risk behaviors. This impact results in lower health claims cost, less rates of absenteeism, and less short-term disability.

Corporate Wellness Programs can include:

Awareness Rasing Activities: Health and wellness newsletters, health topics covered in payroll stuffers, healthy emails.

Health Risk Assessment: Employee health screenings, wellness fairs / health fairs, health risk appraisals.

Educational Programs: Lunchtime wellness presentations, guest speakers at staff meetings.

Skill Building: Healthy cooking demostrations, activity challenges, CPR instruction opportunites, stress management classes, weight management classes.

Interventions: Massage, smoking cessation, and skills to help you get the most out of your doctor visit.

Physical environment: Healthy items in the vending machines and cafeterias, clean air practices, ergonomics, bike racks, flex time, welllit stairways.

Assessment: Employee needs assessment, baseline Corporate Wellness Plan assessment measures, ongoing Corporate Wellness Plan assessment of overall effectiveness.

Why Provide Corporate Wellness Programs

The typical employer spends about $8,000 a year on an employee’s health care. This includes medical insurance, disability and worker’s compensation. As these costs climb, medical insurance is expected to rise at least 10% per year.

A 1999 research study showed that companies using Corporate Wellness Programs had a return on investment from $1.49 – $13 in benefits per dollar spent. The amount depended on the nature of the Corporate Wellness Programs used. (S. Aldana, American Journal of Wellness, 2001; 15:296-320)

One research study showed that a “stop smoking” component to Corporate Wellness Programs can save between $404 -$40,829 per employee, depending on the age and sex of the staff member.

The Corporate Wellness Programs at Traveler’s Company included a self-care book, a newsletter, single-topic brochures, and videotapes. The Corporate Wellness Programs saved the company $7.8 million in employee benefi t costs, decreased doctor visits, and it lowered rates of absenteeism by 1.2 days per staff member per year. The estimated Corporate Wellness Programs ROI was $3.40 per dollar spent.

In 1998, the Health Enhancement Research Organization (HERO) reported a study of 46,026 staff members from six large employers for three years. Employees with an inactive lifestyle had 10% higher costs; staff members with depression had 70% higher costs.

Benefits of Corporate Wellness Programs

Raised Productivity – The Canada Life Assurance Company realized a 4% increase in productivity after starting an employee fitness program.

Raised Job Satisfaction – According to employee opinion surveys conducted by the Silverstone Group about thier Corporate Wellness Programs, staff members’ morale improved, which helped support a more creative work setting.

Improved Recruitment & Retention – In the midst of a tight labor market, Corporate Wellness Programs could be a vital tool to draw new recruits.

Decreased Absenteeism – Canada Life Assurance Company’s rates of absenteeism dropped 42% among staff members in the Corporate Wellness Programs.

Decreased Workers Comp & Disability – In one year, Boeing Company’s number of back injuries decreased by 34%. Six million dollars was saved by tracking injuries as they occurred.

Managed Medical Care Costs – Golden, Colorado Adolf Coors Company’s Corporate Wellness Programs returned $6.19 for every dollar spent.

In an era of rising health care costs and fervent competition, employers have a vested interest in the health of their staff members. Research studies have found that, on average, staff members with healthy behaviors (such as not smoking or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower health care expenses, are absent from work less often, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than staff members with unhealthy behaviors.

Corporate Wellness Program: Getting Leadership Support

Corporate Wellness Plan support from the highest level of leadership is vital to your success in starting a culture of wellness within your worksite. Look for Corporate Wellness Plan support from a leader who is respected by and can influence other leaders. (It’s not necessary that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Corporate Wellness Program.) You will be relying on this culture-of-health champion to advocate for changes that you recommend and to ensure the organization allocates adequate Corporate Wellness Plan resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and enhance the worksite policies, physical environment, and social norms.

Secure Corporate Wellness Plan Staff and Financing

Starting and maintaining a Corporate Wellness Plan within your business needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your business is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Corporate Wellness Program. There are a number of ways to find an individual with the necessary skills to guide and support your business’s Corporate Wellness Program.

Establishing facilities and Corporate Wellness Plan policies, such as those allowing staff members to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be costly, but it does require adequate and sustained financing. If possible, include the creation of a worksite environment that supports the Corporate Wellness Plan as a permanent part of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your business.

Employee Involvement in the Corporate Wellness Plan

Setting up a cross section of staff members to advise your business’s Corporate Wellness Plan ensures that improvements in worksite facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of staff members. In addition, these staff members can support as the front-line Corporate Wellness Plan supporters of policies and practices with their peers.

Develop a Corporate Wellness Plan Vision and “Brand”

A Corporate Wellness Plan vision and a brand are powerful first steps in bringing a Corporate Wellness Plan from an idea to a reality. What would you like your worksite environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Corporate Wellness Plan vision statement summarizes for all (staff members and leaders alike) the reasons for starting a Corporate Wellness Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between staff member health and your business’s ability to achieve its overall mission.

Branding your business’s Corporate Wellness Plan sends a message to staff members that the business’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Select a Corporate Wellness Plan name and logo that resonate with staff members. Then use that brand on all Corporate Wellness Plan communications with staff members about the policies, facilities and programs your business offers to promote healthy behaviors.

Determine Your Present Corporate Wellness Plan Situation

Exactly how your business creates a Corporate Wellness Plan that promotes healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your business and employee population.

Determine how the current worksite facilities, policies, and unwritten norms support — or discourage — healthy behaviors.

Gather information on the health and health-related behaviors of your employee population. The most common method is by using a validated health risk assessment. If you don’t have data specific to your staff members, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data. Note: Information on staff members’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.

Establish Corporate Wellness Plan Priorities and Goals

Use what you’ve discovered about the health of the employees and about your current worksite environment to determine your business’s Corporate Wellness Plan priorities. From those Corporate Wellness Plan priorities, define clear and measurable Corporate Wellness Plan objectives for improving the health of the employees and your business’s culture. Well written objectives will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.

Select Corporate Wellness Plan Procedures

Focus your business’s Corporate Wellness Plan resources (time, energy and money) on strategies that are most likely to produce results: an increase in healthy eating, an increase in physical activity, and a reduction in tobacco use. There’s no need to guess at what might work. The United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of research studies and has identified the Corporate Wellness Plan approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Corporate Wellness Plan strategies are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.

The formula for Corporate Wellness Plan success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.

Implement Corporate Wellness Plan Procedures

Once you’ve chosen your Corporate Wellness Plan Procedures, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline. The “right” amount of time for implementing each Corporate Wellness Plan strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your business. Work plans maintain your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to create a Corporate Wellness Plan stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.

Communicate and Educate About the Corporate Wellness Plan

Ensure staff members are aware of the Corporate Wellness Plan opportunities you’ve provided. Planning your Corporate Wellness Plan communications allows you to communicate regularly with staff members without overwhelming them at any one time.

Monitor and Report Your Corporate Wellness Plan Results

At the same time that you plan your Corporate Wellness Plan Procedures, think about how you’ll measure success. It’s much easier to gather information – or to create systems for collecting information — before you begin a Corporate Wellness Plan strategy rather than as an afterthought. Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in staff member morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in rates of absenteeism or health care claims.

Report both your Corporate Wellness Plan successes in building a healthy worksite environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides staff members time for walking during the workday), and Corporate Wellness Plan successes in getting staff members to take charge of their health (an increase in the number of staff members who contacted the stop-smoking program, or an increase in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).