Insuring Success: Health emphasis at work helps to boost bottom line

Companies can no longer afford to

not invest in health promotion programs

Work site health promotion is a relatively new term in the corporate setting. It refers to a company-endorsed, systematic approach to enhancing the health of the firm and its most important asset: its employees.

In order to reach the greatest health improvement and cost containment potential, programs may include initiatives based in the work site, as well as in the employee's community, clinic and home.

These programs vary widely, but generally take the shape of awareness education, behavior and lifestyle change, and the creation of supportive environments.

The ultimate goal of work site health promotion is to create a culture which values and meets the needs for health improvement for both the individual and the organization.

Here are some examples of work site health promotion programs and the percentage of work sites offering those programs as reported by the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion National Survey:

Job hazards/injury prevention: 66 percent

Nutrition: 34 percent

Exercise/physical fitness: 44 percent

High blood pressure: 31 percent

Smoking control: 41 percent

education: 30 percent

Stress management: 40 percent

Cholesterol: 30 percent

Alcohol/other drugs: 39 percent

Mental health: 29 percent

Back care: 36 percent

Weight control: 28 percent

The work force of today numbers approximately 110 million men and women. Most of these workers spend the major portion of their day at the work site.

This presents a captive audience for the promotion of health and an opportunity to reinforce the need to adopt and maintain healthy lifestyle behaviors.

So, for the corporation's systematic approach (as mentioned above), the work site offers a natural setting to influence the lives of their workers.

Work site health promotion is a particularly effective way to reach people at high risk.

It also provides a convenient setting for the education and peer support needed to start and maintain healthy habits.

Health education at the work site is a way of promoting health that reinforces business efforts aimed at improving worker productivity, absenteeism, effectiveness, motivation and controlling costs associated with illness and injury.

Nationally, employers devote approximately 95 percent of health benefit expenses to treating illness.

Overall shifting of resources to preventive care and health promotion could significantly decrease these benefit expenses.

This fact becomes even more evident when considering that only 15 percent of the working age population is ill at any time while the remaining 85 percent are either well or at risk of developing future illness.

Studies have consistently shown that healthy people make healthy companies. Healthy companies are more likely to make healthy profits and to have healthy returns on their investments.

Essentially, work site health promotion is an investment in a company's human capital.

Investing in human capital is not a question of being able to afford comprehensive health promotion programs it is a matter of recognizing that organizations can no longer afford to not initiate such changes.

Healthier employees yield bottom-line results for all organizations.

(Ted Andrews is an employee benefits manager with Ollis & Company Insurors.)