Worksite Health

Making the Business Case for Wellness

Not sure that your company would benefit from a wellness program? Afraid it would be too expensive or difficult to establish? Don't know where to start? Read on to get convinced and get started.

Benefits

Focusing on the health and productivity of your work force will help you realize significant gains over the short and long term. Numerous employers have found that offering health and wellness programs to their employees leads to a long list of benefits such as:

Retaining hard working employees
Recruiting healthy, productive workers
Reducing absenteeism
Decreasing turnover
Reducing health care benefit claims expenditures
Decreasing workers' compensation claims expenses
Reducing presenteeism
Enhancing job satisfaction

In addition, good will and enhanced morale can be established by offering programs and services that improve quality of life for your work force.

Money Talks

Returns on investment in wellness programs range from a low of $1.87 to a high of over $10 for every dollar spent on wellness.
For every exercising day of the week, health care costs decrease from the median by 4.7%.
For every unit increase in body mass index, costs increased from the median by 1.9%.
Smokers had increases in health care costs of 18-25% compared to non-smokers.

(1999 HealthPartners study)

The Bottom Line

Higher health risk levels are correlated with higher health care costs.
Low health risk levels are associated with lower health care costs.

Employees who are stressed, unhappy, and unhealthy are considered "high risk" because they have a significantly greater chance of becoming ill. When they do get sick companies suffer financially. If your workforce is healthy they're much less likely to get sick and cost the company.

And of course, above all, promoting a healthy work force is just the right thing to do!

Getting Started

Ready to get started? Check out this NetWellness feature on Starting a Wellness Program - For Employers.

For more information:

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This article is a NetWellness exclusive. NetWellness Article

Last Reviewed: Sep 05, 2008

Elizabeth R. Click, ND, RN, CLE
Assistant Professor
Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing
Case Western Reserve University