Company Wellness Becomes Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Issue – How to Reduce Worksite Health Costs.
The Partnership for Avoidance was formed to encourage Fortune 1000 businesses to consider making workforce health a CEO issue and adopt strategies to promote avoidance and wellness.
After a few years of double-digit rate increases for health insurance, businesses are realizing that among the best ways to slow the cost increases is to have personnel take more responsibility for both costs and health options.
A majority of corporations surveyed feel that the best way for decreasing costs is financial incentives to encourage employees to adopt healthier lifestyles.
Almost 100% of employers surveyed say that health care costs are going to be a critical or meaningful concern over the next five years, as reported by a recent survey by United Benefit Advisors.
More businesss are adopting higher deductible heath programs with HRA’s or HSA’S, wellness programs, and expanded disease management (DM) programs to control ever-increasing healthcare costs.
Failure to deal with these issues could be disastrous for an business. Wayne Sensor, CEO of Alegent Health lately stated, “I think that we’ve built a healthcare machinery we can’t afford. I think we’re choking the economic engine of America.”
In his October 2005 newsletter, Dr. Andrew Weil stated, “I think rising health- care costs are becoming the major economic issue in our nation”. Obesity costs California businesses billions of dollars each year.
Projected costs for 2005 may reach 28 billion dollars for direct and indirect healthcare costs, worker’s compensation, and lost productivity. California has experienced among the fastest growing rates of obesity of any state.
According to California Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Belshe, “The obesity epidemic is more than a public health crisis, it’s an economic crisis.” What’s frightening is that most individuals don’t even realize that they are obese, which is defined as only 20% above normal weight.
There’s a great need for additional education on weight and resulting diseases, and the worksite is an ideal venue. Wellness education and programs can lead to a significant return on investment and, if structured properly, can produce results in a very short period of time.
While many businesss have attempted some form of wellness program in the past, results from those efforts have been disappointing.
In many cases, the healthier employees participated for incentives, like health and fitness center memberships, but those who needed it most did not take advantage of the health promotion program in a meaningful way.
Businesses are looking at ways to encourage more personnel to buy into the wellness movement.
A recent webinar hosted by Human Resource (HR) Executive Magazine and presented by Carlson Marketing Group titled, “Healthier Employees; Healthier Bottom Line – Engaging Employees is the Missing Link in Managing Healthcare Costs,” drove this point home.
This session provided actionable advice on how businesses are achieving higher impact with their wellness investments by focusing on staff member engagement. It also highlighted how you can create an Economic Engagement Model to forecast the potential impact for your company.
Businesss can simply no longer ignore the issue of their worker’s unhealthy life choices and must act to engage them in a meaningful health promotion program to reduce health costs, absenteeism and lost productivity.
Employees also benefit as they derive better health and greater satisfaction in both their personal and specialist lives. The alternative is being caught in a non-competitive position and severely impacting the bottom-line of the corporation.