corporate wellness programs

There’s no nice way to say it.  We Americans are fat, and we get fatter every year.  According to the CDC; “About one-third of U.S. adults (33.8%) are obese.  Approximately 17% (or 12.5 million) of children and adolescents aged 2—19 years are obese.”

And it‘s getting worse.  The CDC predicts that one third of those born in 2000 will develop type two Diabetes, and some articles suggest that parents may possibly outlive their children.  

It’s a no brainer that a healthy employee is going to cost your company less than an employee that is likely to die in middle age due to cardiovascular disease and complications that come from obesity. 

The cost of healthcare premiums has doubled in the past ten years, according to the July 30th issue of The Economist. That makes it harder for your company to continue to offer healthcare.  But some companies have started to do more than “suggest” that their employees quit smoking, lean up, and adopt a healthier lifestyle.  Some companies have started to penalize the employees who don’t.  Many firms no longer allow smoking at their facilities.  In fact, The Economist cites GE Capital, who first offered their employees incentives for quitting smoking, and now, those who continue to smoke must pay an additional $650 for health insurance.

That’s where wellness programs excel.  Wellness professionals know how to build programs for your company that will inspire lasting change.  It’s one thing to lose 20 or more pounds, but to provide the education, information, and incentives to help your employee keep it off for a lifetime, quit smoking, and show their families how to do the same, is priceless on many levels.   

Humans often insist on continuing unhealthy behaviors and/or avoiding preventative scans, tests, exercise and wellness even when faced with catastrophic results.  Examples of this include; ignoring a lump in the breast until it’s too late, continuing a diet of heavy fried foods after a diagnosis of diabetes, or continuing to smoke after a diagnosis of lung cancer.

According to an April 8th article published by Healthfinder.gov; many patients diagnosed with lung cancer continue to smoke after being diagnosed.

"The biggest obstacle is fatalism, the belief that it is too late to quit smoking so why bother," said Kathryn E. Weaver, study lead author and assistant professor of social sciences and health policy at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, N.C.

That fatalism can also be said of a morbidly obese employee who feels “set apart” from her peers by her weight, then goes home to a family who is also morbidly obese.  If someone is entirely entrenched in an unhealthy lifestyle with people who are in the same boat, it may seem impossible to even imagine the changes that could be made.

Learning how to change a family’s “wellness picture” can be a life-changing experience for an employee.  But it takes more than a workout routine and the latest fad diet.  A corporate wellness program is meant to talk to and facilitate all of your employees; the athlete, and the person who needs a special hand to guide them to goals they didn’t even know were possible.  You never know when someone is ready to listen.

“The health of an individual is almost inseparable from the health of a larger community, and the health of every community determines the health of a nation,” said Assistant Secretary for Health; Dr. Koh, M.D., M.P.H.

Preventable disease kills seven out of 10 Americans a year, and accounts for 75 percent of the money spent on healthcare.  We’ve talked about these preventable diseases many times before; Diabetes, Heart Disease and Cancer.  The bottom line in any wellness or health program is money.  Rather than throwing money at these diseases once they occur, it makes good monetary sense to attempt to prevent and avoid the disease in the first place.

Those expensive statistics are worrisome to you, the employer, and to me, the wellness professional.  But how do we make those statistics real to the obese civilian or employee who sees themselves as separate from their community just by virtue of being ostracized because of their weight? 

Penny Hoff, a health and fitness coach that contributes to the Huffington Post, presents it this way:

“Look around and you will see lots of obesity -- younger is the new fatter -- but what you will not see is lots of obese septuagenarians (70 years old) or octogenarians.”

“People who remain obese into their second half of life cut the length of that second half by more than half that of a normal weight person. The 70, 80 and 90 year old people you see living an active life are the lean ones. And it's not because the heavier old folks stayed home, or that they decided to lose weight in their fifth or sixth decade. It's because, as Hippocrates, The Dr. Oz of 460 BC said a few thousand years ago, ‘Fat men are more likely to die suddenly than the slender.’ If you are obese, you are going to live a shorter life. Raise your hand if you're ready to go even one day sooner than you have to.”

Sobering.  What’s required after the morbidity wake-up call are the health risk management and wellness programs needed to help our obese employees and their families dial back and reverse the probability of an early demise.  Programs offered by scientifically informed, compassionate professionals make reaching a healthy lifestyle a reality. That’s good for the Nation.  Offering corporate wellness to your employees is good for your wallet, and on a very human level, keeping families together longer is good for the soul.

There’s an interesting blog written in the New York Times by Dr. Sandeep Jauhar, cardiologist.  He raises a few very interesting points on the higher insurance premiums and taxes that cover uninsured people, not to mention the diseases that come from people that are overweight, or smoke.  He poses and answers the question, “Why do we (taxpayers and employers) have to pay for others’ bad habits?” 

We’ve cited the statistics of obesity in this blog many times, obesity is rapidly growing and so are its related diseases; heart disease and diabetes to name a few infamous killers.  Nevertheless, people continue to over-indulge in smoking and consuming food that makes them ill, resulting in increased morbidity risk.

On the other hand, Dr. Jauhar points out that the reason people turn to unhealthy food choices is often because it’s cheaper in this country to eat highly processed junk.  Picture a family of five with severely limited income.  Does it make more sense to buy 3 fast food meat and cheese biscuits for .99 cents each for the kids before school or to purchase one head of organic broccoli for four dollars for dinner?   Economic reality possibly creates a more empathetic picture.  Could this same family be taught the consequences of eating fast food every morning as well as some healthy, affordable alternatives?  Of course. 

Either way, employers like yourselves will pay the price in increased premiums and rates to cover your employees. 

The point?  We Americans are our own worst enemy.  We love our excesses.  It takes discipline, time and perseverance to adopt lasting change.  In the health industry today, we are in the absolute battle trenches when it comes to enlisting and convincing our employees and the country to put the time and finances necessary into providing alternatives that ultimately save money and lives.  We must do everything we can to educate and enlighten.  These alternatives include corporate wellness programs, fitness programs, accurate health risk management and coordination of incentives given for healthy progress. And it has to happen now.  Either way, we’re paying for it.

What do I mean by bounce?  Bounce = Resilience.  Resilience is the one trait that a human being absolutely needs to get through a difficult time.  According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, the definition of resilience is:

1 - the capability of a strained body to recover its size and shape after deformation caused especially by compressive stress

2 - an ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change

According to the American Institute of Stress, “Numerous studies show that job stress is far and away the major source of stress for American adults and that it has escalated progressively over the past few decades. Increased levels of job stress as assessed by the perception of having little control but lots of demands have been demonstrated to be associated with increased rates of heart attack, hypertension and other disorders. In New York, Los Angeles and other municipalities, the relationship between job stress and heart attacks is so well acknowledged, that any police officer who suffers a coronary event on or off the job is assumed to have a work related injury and is compensated accordingly.” 

Effective Corporate Wellness Programs include user-friendly techniques and promotions to keep your employees able to weather the storms on the job front, at their homes, and in their whole life picture.  Because when your employees lose their bounce, it costs you.

2010 has been a big year for food borne illness.  We’ve experienced massive recalls and warnings for locally produced eggs, breakfast cereals, and green, leafy vegetables. 

In March of this year, a study by a former FDA economist and current Ohio State University assistant professor in the department of consumer science, Dr. Robert L. Scharff estimates that “produce (fresh, canned and processed) accounts for roughly 19,700,000 of the reported illnesses documented, at a cost of approximately $1,960 per case and $39 billion annually in economic losses.” The study was funded by the Pew Charitable Trust.

Depending on the specific cause or  pathogen, food borne illness can result in a range of reactions from uncomfortable to death, or anything in between such as the loss of ability to return to work or function normally in society.  Callous as considering your bottom line may sound when it comes to potential illness or death, even sick days directly affect your company.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that approximately 76 million new cases of food-related illness — resulting in 5,000 deaths and 325,000 hospitalizations — occur in the U.S. each year. According to makeourfoodsafe.org, California pays an unbelievable annual $18,613,000,000 in aggregate medical costs.  New York pays an annual $10,375,000,000.

According to Erik Olson, of the Pew Health Group, “This report makes it clear that gaps in our food safety system are causing significant health and economic impacts.”  

Health and economic impacts, most certainly.  Those numbers, as with any other vastly devastating physical issues, such as obesity and the resulting diseases; i.e. cardiovascular disease and diabetes, can and should be reduced by prevention.  Food borne illness prevention calls for education.  Education comes from a comprehensive wellness program that teaches your employees the basics about food safety, how to clean, separate, cook and chill food, whether it’s necessary to spend more for organic to keep their families safe, how to store leftovers, and what to do in the event of a poisoning or emergency.   

As always, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The University of Michigan published a unique study that reported a substantial return when a company invests in corporate wellness.  What set this study apart from the rest was that it considered all costs involved with implementing a long-term employee wellness program, such as menu changes, employee recruiting, and marketing.

For the nine year study, researchers at the U of M followed a midwestern utility company and discovered a net savings of close to $5 million after offering a corporate wellness program that not only aimed to take care of sick employees, but also kept the rest of the employees and their families healthy and on the job.

According to Alyssa Shultz, research area specialist intermediate, the midwestern company spent $7.3 million on their wellness program over the nine years.  After determining various medical and pharmaceutical costs and employee time off, Shultz reported a savings of $12.1 million.

“One of the advantages of the study is it shows that a sustainable program will give you savings,” stated Dee Edington, a research scientist in the University of Michigan school of Public Health.

At the IHRSA 2010 conference today, Larry Chapman referenced a research study in the February 2010 journal "Health Affairs" that showed every dollar spent on wellness programs reduced corporate medical costs by $3.27 and absenteeism costs by $2.73. Where else in your organization are you enjoying a combined ROI of 600%?

Unite. That's right. It's time that we realize that many of the solutions to more efficient healthcare and increased productivity among our employees are up to us.

It's time to understand that we must give our people the tools to ease them into a new way of healthy thinking and eventually healthy living.

We are smart enough to know that a healthy life is a better and less expensive one, we must share that knowledge.

The goal of our blog is to provide ideas, tools, resources, and advice to help your company achieve the most priceless resource of all: health.

We all know the high cost of absenteeism, prevalent when workplace morale is low and employees are unwell, unhappy, and call in sick. But what about the costs when they do come to work sick, depressed, or just plain don’t want to be there?  This extremely expensive phenomenon is called “presenteeism.”