June is National Employee Wellness Month, an opportunity for organizations to take a closer look at the health and state of their workers.
The occasion can be used to examine current and potential policies relating to employee health and wellness, and adjusting them to have greater effect. Sound policies can help to improve productivity as well as health, and build a supportive community in the workplace. The month-long initiative is sponsored by Virgin HealthMiles, the Partnership to Fight Chronic Disease, WorldatWork and the Strategies to Overcome and Prevent Obesity Alliance. This is the fourth year of the annual event.
To help employers begin assessing their options, Virgin HealthMiles recently released a survey showing employee health and wellness strategies may be hindered by lack of awareness. Although many organizations are adjusting their employee benefit offerings to focus more on prevention, workers may not be fully aware of these efforts.
About 83 percent of organizations surveyed offer employee health and wellness benefits, and most of those are seeking to lower their healthcare costs. Successful preventive care has been shown to have that effect in the long-term, but strong participation is necessary.
Reaching Employees
While more than half of employers say their workers understand the benefits available to them, and how to participate, only 41 percent of employees expressed the same confidence.
"If employees aren't aware of their employers' programs and how to participate, health behaviors won't change," said Chris Boyce, Virgin HealthMiles CEO. "This is a traditional problem with how employee health and wellness has historically been done. If organizations don't get this right, they won't get the business impact they seek from their employee health investments."
Researchers found that, while employees generally wish to engage in these programs, organizations need to reach out effectively in order to help them do so. Promoting health and wellness initiatives and benefit offerings and educating employees about them may be as important as good program design to success.
Similarly, organizations may want to increase their focus on gathering and analyzing data on their programs so they can assess their success and repair any flaws. National Employee Wellness Month is an opportunity for HR departments, managers and companies to share information and improve their impact in their workers. This may have advantages for future talent recruitment and retention, healthcare costs, and other aspects of business.
