What if your employees had the means to make corporate health and wellness an integral part of their workday? How might that impact your people’s engagement levels? How about your company’s productivity and its ability to attract and retain talent? Ultimately, how would it affect the bottom line?

But wellness is more than a program. Instead, think of it as a way to improve your quality of life and help your people show up as their best selves every day. And believe me, health matters in your business setting.

Consider these employee responses to an Aon Hewitt survey that asked for their opinions on workplace wellness initiatives offered by employers:

Yes, wellness programs matter. Here are some more reasons why:

1. Your company foots the bill for unhealthy employees.
2. Building a healthy workforce provides many benefits beyond ROI.

Let’s jump in…

The Onerous Costs of “Sick-Care”

Health insurance and claims costs are soaring exponentially. You are trying to minimize cost increases while remaining competitive for marketplace talent. But your foundational strategies are not keeping up with the realities of an unhealthy workforce. A reactive care model is just not sustainable.

Our country’s healthcare system wasn’t designed to help prevent the onset of disease but rather to diagnose and treat illness. Hence, the American healthcare system, and the fallback position of many companies, is based on an acute care model, where the focus is to address (instead of prevent) urgent issues and manage chronic diseases. This reactive approach is expensive and inefficient. It’s why more and more companies are embracing a new model that promotes proactive health and wellness.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), preventable chronic conditions are at an all-time high in the US. They are also a major contributor to the costs of employee medical claims and health insurance premiums. The CDC lists five chronic conditions or risk factors:

• High blood pressure
• Diabetes
• Smoking
• Physical inactivity
• Obesity

These cost US employers a whopping $36.4 billion a year because of employees missing days of work. Obesity alone increases job absenteeism due to injury or sickness by three days per year. And post-pandemic, obesity has risen. Annually, productivity losses due to obesity range from $271 to $542 for each obese employee. When calculating the cost-effectiveness of interventions, it’s vital to take reductions in absenteeism into account.

Research shows that employees of normal weight cost $3,830 per year on average for a covered medical, sick day, short-term disability, and worker’s comp claims combined. Employees that were morbidly obese cost over double that amount, or $8,067 – and that was in 2011!

In all, US employers spent an estimated $13,728 per employee on healthcare in 2020, and this spending will only continue to rise. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services projects that national health costs will increase at an average annual rate of 5.4% until 2028.

Your company may have little control over many of the factors that drive up healthcare costs, but one area you can influence is the incidence of your employees’ unhealthy habits. Because here’s the thing, all the above risk factors can be controlled – and often prevented – with proven, achievable lifestyle changes. Yes, getting your employees to move more, eat healthily, reduce stress, sleep better, and work on detrimental habits can pay huge dividends.

In fact, supermarket chain H-E-B found that over time, moving just 10 percent of employees from high and medium-risk to low-risk status yielded an ROI of 6 to 1! But investing in workplace well-being has tangible benefits beyond monetary savings. Let’s explore…

Going beyond ROI

Here are just a few of the additional benefits of providing a wellness program for your workforce:

More likely to stay, more likely to recommend

Providing corporate wellness services is an investment in attracting and retaining talent. Research shows that the availability of well-designed wellness programs improves employees’ net promoter score (eNPS). Employees with access to 7-8 programs are one and a half times more likely to remain with their employer. 89% of workers at companies that provide wellness initiatives are more likely to recommend their company as a good place to work. Programs that help employees manage chronic conditions and provide a physical work environment that promotes healthy decision-making have the biggest impact on eNPS. And ultimately, attracting and retaining talent reduces the burden of an already busy HR staff.

Increased productivity

Companies that promote well-being can experience 21% higher productivity. And compromised employee health is one of the top reasons for lagging productivity. The last thing your company needs is a sluggish and mediocre workforce. Taking part in company wellness programs involves developing healthy habits, such as regular exercise, stress reduction, improved sleep hygiene, and good nutrition, that are linked to more productive behaviors. Better health results in a more focused and motivated workforce.

For instance, one Harvard study demonstrated that the benefits of exercise go beyond physical. Evidence suggests that it boosts mental abilities like:

• Improved cognitive function
• Sharper memory
• Enhanced creativity
• Better concentration

Employees that exercise regularly are for the most part healthier than their sedentary co-workers. This results in fewer sick days and medical appointments, and overall reduced absenteeism.

Better nutrition also matters. One Brigham Young study of nearly 20,000 employees found that those with unhealthy diets were 66% more likely to report lower productivity. But employees who eat right get more done in a day.

As Virgin’s Richard Branson advises corporate leaders, “Take care of your employees and they will take care of your business. It’s as simple as that. Healthy, engaged employees are your top competitive advantage.”

Bottom line: better habits lead to better health and better outcomes. So, what positive outcomes might your company gain by implementing a comprehensive corporate wellness solution?

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Did you know that the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that six out of ten adults live with a chronic medical condition? This type of statistic is why you might consider focusing on promoting wellness in the workplace because effective corporate wellness programs don’t just make employees healthier and more productive, they will positively impact a company’s bottom line over time. For most companies, addressing chronic disease will yield the best results, considering 86% of all medical dollars are spent on chronic conditions. But where do you start?

Step 1: Getting a Baseline

The first critical step toward creating health and wellbeing programs for employees is to obtain information about your current workforce’s health – and your organization’s willingness to improve health outcomes based on this information. This will enable your company to design and implement programs that benefit both employers and employees. Here are some steps you can take to obtain this information: 

Step 2: Find your top return health areas

Now it’s time to dig into the insurance data, clinical screenings, and biometric assessments you’ve collected to closely scrutinize your findings. You’ll want to focus your efforts on the areas that align with the company’s overall health strategy and provide the highest return. Concentrate on addressing the most prevalent health risks and chronic conditions in your population. This will provide you with the highest ROH – return on the health of your employees over the long term. Over time, ROH will naturally lead to a positive ROI (return on investment). 

What will give you the highest ROH by directly targeting the most pervasive chronic conditions and costs among your people? Simple. Disease management and risk prevention. Let’s take the leading chronic conditions among individuals aged 18-64:

• hypertension (30%)
• cholesterol disorders (20%)
• respiratory diseases (19%)
• and diabetes (12%)

Obesity is both a chronic condition and a risk factor and tops the list at just under 42% of US adults. Obesity is responsible for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and other chronic conditions. It is related to a dozen types of cancer, and the incidence of obesity-related cancers among young adults is rising rapidly. These chronic conditions are among the most prevalent causes of premature death and are almost always preventable. Chances are that your employee population will roughly mirror the statistics above. There’s also a good chance that the conditions are going undiagnosed among your working population. So how do you target these and the behaviors that lead to them? 

1. Dig into data such as health claims and biometric reports to identify the top chronic conditions.
2. Conduct health screenings and incentivize employees to get regular check-ups with their primary care providers. 

Then focus your company’s well-being initiatives around developing vital healthy habits – like eating better, moving more, drinking less alcohol, kicking the cigarette habit, and lowering stress levels – and reward employees for achieving measurable, controlled outcomes.

Final points to consider

Targeted, comprehensive health and well-being programs for employees clearly provide an identified return on investment. To give an example, the Rand Wellness Program Study analyzed 10-year data from a Fortune 100 company’s wellness program. Tellingly, managing chronic conditions generated a $136 savings per employee per month, and reduced hospital admissions by 30%. And lifestyle management generated a $6 savings per employee monthly – and these figures don’t include productivity gains, reduction in absenteeism and presenteeism, and the savings gained through less employee turnover! And it’s a win-win for everybody. If employees just develop the following five behavioral habits, on average they will save 33%-50% on their own healthcare:

• Walking 30 minutes daily
• Eating healthy foods
• Ceasing smoking
• Limiting alcohol consumption
• And getting their waistlines down to less than half their height. 

So, there you have it – promoting wellness in the workplace generates significant cost savings for a company and its individual employees. And that’s a beautiful thing.

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