What is Workplace Wellness?
Workplace wellness refers to the education and activities that a worksite may do to promote healthy lifestyles for employees and their families. Examples of wellness initiatives include such things as health education classes, subsidized use of fitness facilities, internal policies that promote healthy behavior, and any other activities, policies or environmental changes that affect the health of employees.
Why Workplace Wellness?
It affects your company’s bottom line in many ways. Namely, workplace wellness can lower health care costs, increase productivity, decrease absenteeism, and raise employee morale. Because employees spend many of their waking hours at work, the workplace is an ideal setting to address health and wellness issues.
Wellness programs help control costs. Health care costs are a significant portion of a company’s budget, so strategically targeting this expense can significantly benefit an employer’s bottom line. An investment in your employees’ health may lower health care costs or slow cost increases. Employees with more health risk factors, including being overweight, smoking, and having diabetes, cost more to insure and pay more for health care than people with fewer risk factors. A wellness program can help employees with high risk factors make lifestyle changes to improve their quality of life and lower costs, while also helping employees with fewer risk factors remain healthy.
Healthier employees are more productive. Research shows that workplaces with wellness programs have employees who are more productive at work.
Healthier employees miss less work. Healthier employees mean fewer sick days, which is another benefit companies generally achieve through wellness programs. Plus, employees’ healthier behavior may translate into better family choices, so employees may also miss less work caring for ill family members. Reduced absenteeism can yield significant cost savings and return on your wellness investment.
Wellness programs can reduce workers’ compensation and disability costs. Employees who make healthy changes and lower health risk factors often have a lower chance of a workplace injury or illness or a disability. In both cases, this can save the employer money, not just on insurance premiums and benefits paid out, but also on the replacement cost of recruiting and training a new worker to replace one out of work for health reasons.
Communicating Wellness through Social Media
Workplace wellness remains a vital initiative for companies striving toward a healthier employee population and reduced health care costs. A significant part of any workplace wellness program is employee communication and education, and social media can be a beneficial way to expand those efforts.
Why Social Media?
In order for your health and wellness communications to be effective, they must be reaching your employees. Odds are, many employees and their families are already on social media, so taking your message there is a strategic way to expand the reach of your wellness communications. Here are some additional benefits:
Employees on social media are more likely to pay attention to communications there than ones you email or post on a bulletin board.
Research shows that social networks often influence people’s behavior. Furthermore, many consumers already search online for health and wellness information—you have an opportunity to deliver the information employees are looking for in the place they’re already spending time.
Social Media is an effective way to keep a pulse on your employees, to see what they are saying about your wellness program and where they have questions—so you can look for opportunities to improve. Social media offers an opportunity for conversation and interaction, which your other wellness communications are likely lacking.
Get Started
The best places to start communicating are Facebook and Twitter, as they are likely the most popular among your employee population, plus they are free. Create Facebook and Twitter accounts separate from your company accounts—these new accounts will be employee-focused and can include internal communications, wellness and benefits communications.
For an internal social media initiative to succeed, it is vital that you promote it to employees. In one sense, it’s easier than promoting a social media presence externally, because you have a captive audience, but you do need to think carefully about your message. Don’t simply announce that your company has created internal accounts; rather, share the benefits for employees, such as:
Health-Related Productivity Costs
According to Rutgers University, employee health problems cost employers approximately $226 billion each year. Of these substantial costs, approximately 70 percent resulted from a reduction in productivity, with the rest coming from work absences due to illness. While offering health coverage and benefits for employees and dependents is a major business expense, lost productivity due to physical and emotional health problems can be far more costly for employers.
Lost productivity is classified in two ways: presenteeism and absenteeism. While absenteeism means that the employee is physically not at work, presenteeism is when an employee is physically at work but a physical or mental health condition negatively affects their work quality and quantity. Employers spend two to three dollars on medical-related productivity costs (presenteeism) for every dollar spent on pharmacy and health care costs.
The AdvancePCS Center for Work and Health in Hunt Valley, Md. conducted a study of 29,000 employees in the United States to determine how many hours and dollars were spent on lost productivity. The study revealed that 71 percent of lost productivity time was directly related to deficient performance on the job, while only 23 percent was due to actual absences from work. The remaining 6 percent of productivity costs were found to be associated with family health obligations. In addition, smokers who smoke at least one pack per day had productivity losses double that of their nonsmoking counterparts.
The objective of a good Wellness program is to decrease health-related productivity costs.
To reduce productivity costs in your workplace, consider the following:
- Address conditions that affect many individuals of your employee population in your wellness initiatives.
- Offer health fairs, screenings, and health risk assessments to evaluate the needs of employees.
- Integrate your health benefit strategies with your health management and wellness initiatives.
- Design your benefits package to support the behaviors that you want to see at your organization.