Employee Wellness Programs

The Physical fitness and a healthy lifestyle impact on human personality and his day- to-day life. The corporate wellness agenda will interpret into fever injuries and there will be very less human error and provides humanitarian office surroundings. They are intended to know once business activities about the business following certain general health and well being. However a well managed corporate well being program will result in the reduction in stress. Hence the United Nations called the program is ‘the 20th century Disease (Wright, 2004).

So the stress may affect our personal relationship and transaction either directly or indirectly. But a large number of the employees in a company may complain that their work pressure or the stress is increasing or may argue that their job is stressful, so this factor may affect within the organization. Therefore the human beings are not just designed as a magical figure into some people as he leaves his work environment. However the top management is decided that the physical fitness as an essential and prudent investment in the health and once they get trained about the fitness, they will be a most valuable asset to any company.

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In the year of 1998 the Johnson and Johnson, corporate Health Achievement Award was given to American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine for its incredible effort to ensure his employees fitness. The Johnson and Johnson was one of the four national winners selected for having one of the healthiest employees in the United States. In order to get the J&J award the company must be top in four significant conditions.

That is the company should have healthy people, Healthy environment, its position should be healthy and finally its management should be excellent.

But these parameters are considered as the crucial for developing and deploying a comprehensive corporate health program. In the year 2000, the New Jersey psychological association presented J&J award with the psychological healthy workplace Award. This award is focused on the work place well beings and developing a psychologically healthy working environment to its employees. Back ground Note According to the past data the US industry spent approximately $200 billion on employee health insurance clime in a year.

Due to increase in the on – site accidents, burrn – out and absenteeism, lower productivity and decreases in the employee morale tempt it to spend the money for insurance. Yet the US industry expenditure on its employee medical problem and disability bills was rising drastically. According to the dates in 1998 the US industry had paid as estimated $4000 per annum per employee as health care costs. But in the year of 2001 it rose to $5,162 and near to $5,700 in 2002 (Teresa, 2007). But they considered the stress in the work place is the second major reason to increase the expenditure apart from the health related problem.

The main problems like nervousness, tension, anxiety, loss of patience, inefficiency in the work and even in the chronic disease will come from Work stress. Therefore as the result of these health related problems, absenteeism increased and the company overall productivity of employees decreased at a large extent. Regarding the work stress and the health problems a survey was conducted by the whirlpool foundation, Working Mother Magazine and Work and family News brief in 1997, along with 150 executives at US.

The survey states that there is a close association between employee wellness programs (which included flexi work options, employee care, employee assistance programs). The survey mainly focused to improve in the area like efficiency, high employee satisfaction, and high moral and reduced health care expenditure of the employee. So this report suggest that if a company is strong in the health and wellness program, should be offer less in conditions of monitory support to its employee.

DW Edingto a professor from the University of Michigan said that,’ Wellness program in general and the fitness program in meticulous may be the only employee remuneration which pays money back. But the program will give good result and it gives fitness to the employee to work. When more and more people come to the work, the company needs not to pay overtime money. When the people stay at the job, the longer training expense will decrease and it will lower health care claims and also will reduce the health care insurance as well as some companies are already being to create premiums based on the level of fitness’.

By understanding the main reason for increasing expenditure due to fitness, low employee productivity under continuous absenteeism, many companies in US started to offer health and wellness program to their employee in the late 1990. According to the Hewitt Associates study in 2001 ( including 945 major Multinational company), approximately 93% of the corporate presented Health wellness programs as compared to 89% in the year of 1996 (Pramod, 2008).

Camille Haltom , a health specialist with Hewitt Associates, who is explaining about the improvement that’ due to increased cost pressures the employers had a converted interest and enthusiasm about health promotion and the medical supervision programs, which will co operate to reduce absenteeism, provide cost savings, and increase the productivity’. Majority of the US Company applied this method to get cost advantage and grabbed the opportunity to maximize their earnings.

For example the Pepsi Co invested $2 million in the health fitness and gained the return which is three times higher than they are invested at first. Similarly the DuPont introduced a program “Health Horizons” and they got the return which is five times higher than their investment. According to the Tenneco industries, this invested $11 million by starting the fitness centre over the area of 25000 sqf (Manjoo, 2007). By investing in this area the company could reduce its total medical or the health care expenditure declined to the half.

Mean while the General electronics also introduced the wellness program for its employee and it succeeded in cutting its total health care expenditure to 38% within one and half a year. On the other hand the employee who did not participated in this program caused to increase the health care cost to 21%. According to a study conducted by the Life insurance company for mutual benefit, in the new jersey employees who participated the programs like wellness, fitness and health care program had a medical clime , which is 70% less than the health care expense by non- participants.

Haltom who expressed his opinion that ‘‘We expect that organization will not only continue to offer health promotion programs but look for ways to enhance and expand existing programs for employees” (Manjoo, 2007). Benefit of the wellness program The wellness program or the healthcare fitness program is considered as one of the most significant factor in corporate cost cutting principles. The program had already benefited to most of the industries and to the companies, under their continuous cost cutting activity. The important fact is providing proper training and healing to their employees to be an active worker.

The program may also include the professional training towards the stress, Body fitness measures, entertainment program to reduce stress and to get relaxation mood etc. So by the application of these programs, the employee will be in a satisfied mood. So it generally tends him to work more and not to be absent. On the other hand it could automatically reduce its medical expenditure due to the healthiest worker. However the immediate effect of the program is Decreased Absenteeism and improves job performance and moral.

Satisfied and healthy employee won’t do any unnecessary leave to the job but he has interested to go job continuously. So the problem of Absenteeism will be solved and the company can save more money by giving the overtime expenses, due to the availability of more number of workers (Coffield, 2008). Therefore the fit employees feel better at the workplace and about his job and ultimately resulting in increased production. Similarly it will helps to the organization to increase the per employees productivity. For concern we could see humpty number of companies, they adopted the program and got success.

Apart from these benefits we can see certain ongoing benefits, in which the company find better outcome. They are improved company image, reduced risk of disease, promote longevity, healthier employee and reduced health care costs. Due to the continuous improvement the company could produce the product with good quality at cheap price. So that it helped them to market their product with cheap price. Due to cost cut advantage, they could market quality product at convenient price than their competitor. Gradually it helps to improve the company image or the good will.

For concern about the reduction in the health care cost, a study was conducted and it states that employees who exercise incur health care cost 31% lower than those who don’t. However the surgeon opines that the 70 % of the illness are comes from due to the life style related problems. By providing the better treatment to this problem, could reduce it to the one half of all the medical cost. Hence the corporate should establish health related program to their employees to get all these advantages. Real life facts about wellness programs

? The central Pacific Rail road introduced medical care program for its employees and generated a savings of $1. 26 million. ? The Lincoln plating, which introduced the wellness program to its employees which enabled the company to cut down its annual employee turnover rate by half percentage within two year and it got realized return more than $8, 00,000 by investing $85,000. ? The high smith Inc company based in Wisconsin in an intensive risk rating program adopted and which employed 300 employed to reduce its health care cost. ? The Miami Valley Hospital could achieve in cutting its risk on the employee health by 15%.

? Portage country schools talented gold well work place award and got appreciation for being among the Healthiest Schools in the US. Negatives of the wellness program The work place wellness program provides the access, opportunity, support and the encouragement needed for the workers active participation in the improving their health related problems. However the program’s majority portion has benefit than the disadvantages. Yet the program has several disadvantages throughout its implementation process. The main important disadvantage of this program is that it incurs high cost to implement and lack of employee participation.

In order to implement the plan the company needs to invest a large amount in almost all its sectors. However it depends on country to county. If it is a multinational country, they may hit the cultural related problems. Because the culture is varies from one country to another. However they cannot make policies of cannot conduct the wellness program according to their wish. In order to customization the plan, it requires huge investments. Similarly another important negative of the program is the lack of employee participation in the wellness program. In some company the participation rate hit to only 70% to 80%.

Still 20% of the employees are not participating in the wellness program due to several other reasons. Under this low rate of participation the company could not achieve 100% success in this field (Leap, 1992). Another criticism of this program is related with civil rights. Many argue that implementing wellness programs at work place will violate their civil rights and restrict themselves from freed on to use certain products. The general view is that the introduction of this program will violate their civil rights by avoiding their habits like smoking, drug etc.

However the people have the liberty and right to consume drug, cigarettes and some other intoxicate but the enforcement of the program will exploit their civil right. The people who already had the experience in the consumption of all these activity are rejected to participate in this program. Conclusion Many modern organizations have realized the importance of stress management training to their employees as part of the wellness program, for increased productivity. Good mental health leads to good physical health. Healthy employees lead to a healthy organization. Stress management in employees encourages healthy lifestyle.