Production in the Workplace…The Wellness Way

Recently, there has been a tremendous amount of focus on corporate wellness and its worth. Corporations and business are bottom line folks. While it may be nice to do the “right thing” for employees, it is probably not the driving their health and wellness desire. Results and productivity are what big business is after. What businesses do like are cold hard facts…

• Obesity-related conditions cost employers $12 billion a year due to higher health care utilization and medical claims, lower productivity, increased absenteeism, and higher health and disability insurance premiums, according to a study in the American Journal of Health Promotion.
In other words…more health care costs and less productivity from employees who may not be living healthy and wellness minded lifestlyes. The solution?

Corporations and business don’t like overhaul…generally that costs more money. However, what has been successful with the some companies I have worked with are these few suggestions which are then formalized into a more specific plan.

First: Ask The Employees – Asking the employee’s how best to help them, may be the simplest solution for idea generation. Now, are all the ideas going to be workable, no? “Give me free stuff.” Is always the one that comes up. However, those employees that are serious about creating workplace wellness will generate good, usable ideas.

Second: Lead By Example – Top down, management needs to be engaged, motivated and vocal about health and wellness. We cannot ask of our employees what we ourselves are not willing to do.

Third: Identify Opportunity – The opportunity to be engaged in the place that people spend most of their time may afford some the unique experience to step up. Workplace Wellness Coordinators can be identified and utilized. These can be individuals who in their everyday job may not be management level people, however, this could be an opportunity for them to get involved and be engaged.

Fourth: Make it Positive – Focus on wellness from a corporate perspective is about the dollar. However, enacting positive, energy charged solutions, that engage the employees, allow for employee socialization and show that there is value to employees health and wellbeing past productivity is vital.

While there is much more planning to actually orchestrating a workplace wellness program, the goals are truly always the same. Effective employee utilization of the programs to then decrease employer costs and absenteeism. The side benefits? Unity and loyalty of the employees, increased moral and truly a better reputation of caring for the individual rather than just the “worker”.