Employee wellness programs are good for employers as well as employees. Healthy employees are more efficient and happier members of your team. Employers that offer wellness programs report increased employee productivity and performance, reduced healthcare costs, and higher rates of employee retention within the first year of program implementation.
What differentiators does your organization tout when trying to recruit or retain top talent – a low-cost health care benefit, a matching 401(k) plan, unlimited time off? What about your wellness program? Employee wellness programs can transcend your organization, delivering a message to both potential job candidates and current employees that your organization is an attractive place to work. In fact, a well-designed wellness program can be the difference between signing an employee or sending them in the direction of a competitor- or losing an integral member of your team to another company. Offering a robust, creative benefits package can provide a competitive advantage in the war for talent, and while there are many components that make a package enticing, a comprehensive wellness program is a big differentiator for many organizations. When wellness is woven into the foundation of an organization’s culture, employees feel that their well-being is important to their employer and they become engaged. Employees who are more engaged make a personal investment in their employer and are less likely to leave for another position.
Demonstrating to employees that you care about them by investing in their overall well-being can improve loyalty. Employees who work for an organization with a wellness program are less likely to leave their jobs for a different one. Furthermore, employees indicate wellness programs are a reason they would accept a job over another job.
If you are looking for ways to help your team members become more productive, an employee wellness program can help. While you likely know that workplace wellness programs offer many benefits to organizations and individuals, such as reduced absenteeism and health insurance costs, the impact of these programs on an employee’s productivity may surprise you. The average person spends the majority of their life at work, and about half of the population cites work as their biggest stressor. The ‘always on’ phenomenon, including email marathons, back-to-back meetings, working during ’time-off’, and long commutes thrown into the mix creates an ongoing demand for wellness tools and best practices to help manage stress, anxiety, and frustration on a daily basis. And in a work environment that demands increasingly more from employees to keep pace with accelerating technology and higher expectations, stress can have a negative impact on well-being and on productivity. Productivity is complex- there’s absenteeism, presenteeism (being physically present on the job but being mentally distracted), and the effects of employee turnover. Employee wellness programs can help staff get and stay healthier, both physically and emotionally. These programs can result in employees taking fewer sick days, feeling less stressed at work and being more focused on the task at hand. It encourages employee engagement and loyalty, and, bottom line, healthy and happy employees are more productive employees.
For many employees, good health is as much a social endeavor as it is a personal journey, and employees can find themselves regularly making poor health choices that are difficult to change. Employee wellness programs can help move disparate, long-tenured employee populations along a path toward health awareness and new habits, as well as a collective sharing of these goals. By working with employers, wellness programs help create a culture of well-being, adding the dimension of group emotional support that can be invaluable. By steadily and positively building upon change, one success after another, wellness programs can help create enduring results that impact both employees and their employers. Employees come to understand that this program are not designed to tell them what to do but rather help them discover new found strengths within themselves. And, wellness programs can often create employee interactions unlikely to otherwise occur during the workday, prompting conversations and relations that catalyze new ideas and improve work culture and morale.
Having a great workforce can spell the difference between success and failure. We know that stronger and healthier employees benefit organizations, with less spent in healthcare needs and less time spent away from work.The happier and healthier employees are, the more apt a company will be successful. But that isn’t always a guarantee. Businesses face many employee-related issues that can chisel away at their success. One of those is absenteeism, and Injuries, illness, and medical appointments are the most commonly reported reasons for missing work. As healthcare costs remain relentless and rise steadily year over year, employee wellness programs have come center stage to help organization’s improve two significant cost drivers- healthcare costs and workers’ compensation claims. Employees with high health risks tend to miss more work than their healthier counterparts, and they have the highest workers’ compensation costs. Health conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, hypertension and even poor sleep contribute to this. It is often a struggle to make the lifestyle changes that these diseases demand, and that can often lead to mental health issues like depression and anxiety. By providing a workplace wellness program that encourages employees to stay active, eat a nutritious diet and manage their weight, companies can keep direct medical and workers compensation costs in check, and employees can begin a journey towards improved health and well-being.
To learn more about the Think Wellness Employee Program CLICK HERE