Wellness is a business strategy
Posted by AccountingWEB in Fitness on 03/18/2010 - 23:01
By Jim Ripple, CPA
Six factors cause 80 percent of all deaths in our country:
* Smoking
* High cholesterol
* High blood pressure
* Obesity
* Alcoholism
* Physical inactivity
Because American adults spend more days at work than any other modern country — with no legally mandated vacation minimums — it begs the question of how businesses can impact wellness.
Businesses can use a variety of tactics as part of a wellness strategy:
- Education – Start a wellness program. This may include seminars, health fairs and screenings, or newsletters to educate employees on health matters.
- Motivation - Some employers provide non-monetary incentives for healthy behavior. Employers can sponsor exercise or weight loss groups. They can recognize achievements in company newsletters or provide inexpensive rewards (such as sweatshirts) for individuals achieving certain goals.
- Compensation - Give bonuses, subsidize the cost of special programs, or pay for the cost of preventative care not otherwise covered by the insurance plan.
- Regulation - Enforce some health-related behaviors (by prohibiting on-duty use of tobacco, alcohol, or illegal drugs). Employer mandates must be directly work-related, consistently communicated and applied, and in compliance with laws protecting employee privacy and disabilities.
Of the six factors noted above, doctors identify smoking as the most avoidable cause of death and disease and note its strong connection with heart disease and cancer. Smokers also consistently have higher health insurance claims than nonsmokers and take longer to recover from illness. But after just five years without smoking, heart disease and cancer risks return to almost normal levels.
Talk to your financial advisor or third party administrator about ways to implement cost-saving measures through an employee wellness strategy.
Jim Ripple, CPA, is the Audit Manager and serves on the manufacturing niche team of Olsen Thielen, jripple@otcpas.com, 952-941-9242.
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Gail Perry, CPA
changing times
well, slowly teh landscape is changing as more companies, particularly those in HR and belonging to samller companies, developing a more employee-focused apparoach on education the latter on the importance of wellness. everything, i believe,is just a matter of education. i justhope that more companies and employees take initiatives to improve the overall current situation. several papers written by Tony Kellerman have detailed the merits of having a strategic wellness campaign targeting employees. i hope more people give emphasis on their employee's wellness.
Questionable...
It's my opinion that businesses don't care so much about the employee's wellness. They care more about productivity and profit. But only if you consider that productivity and profit might increase due to healthier employees and make the business men think like this, only than will they develop wellness programs for their workers.