The Importance of Corporate Wellness

From the perspective of a wellness professional, to question the importance of corporate wellness seems silly. However, with that being said, most of the people involved in planning corporate wellness are not necessarily wellness professionals but business people trying to do what is best for their company. For this reason, I think it’s important to restate what positive impacts corporate wellness programs have for both business creating them and the employees participating in them. Corporate wellness makes good business both for the bottom line of the company as well as the health and wellbeing of their employees.
Corporate wellness from the business perspective allows companies to act proactively rather than reactively. Participation helps to assure that through specific wellness programs their employees begin to feel better and subsequently reduce health related absenteeism, workplace stress workplace turnover and in the long term reduce health care and workers compensation costs. In a recently published article by the Weight Control Information Network, the cost of overweight and obesity in the United States is 117 billion dollars. Yes 117 BILLION. That’s 61 billion for direct costs and 56 billion in indirect costs. Direct health care costs refer to preventive, diagnostic, and treatment services such as physician visits, medications, and hospital and nursing home care. Indirect costs are the value of wages lost by people unable to work because of illness or disability, as well as the value of future earnings lost by premature death. Businesses provide coverage for approx 64% of that money…that’s a lot of green to be shoulder by business owners. Imagine being able to reduce those expenses while creating a positive working environment.
For the employee, participation in workplace wellness programs can increase the employee’s health awareness, decrease employee absenteeism, foster a feeling of community amongst the employees and increase employee retention. Top down wellness has also been shown to be especially appreciated, showing a “lead by example” leadership mentality.
Acting proactively takes innovation and leadership. Too often we, as a society, play wait and see. This type of attitude has truly brought us to the brink of a true health crisis. Creating corporate wellness programs is a fantastic first step to initiating positive long lasting change.