Tess Taylor 
Wellness programs can be an effective way for businesses to encourage employees to live a healthier lifestyle. It can help to reduce turnover and even improve your employee’s absences. It can save companies a great deal of money in the long term. The right program will pay for itself.
What Is a Wellness Program?
Many businesses are implementing a wellness program as a way to prevent low productivity and to reduce high turnover. These places can help in various ways:
- It helps to promote a healthier lifestyle for employees.
- It helps employees to reduce stress at work.
- It can reduce illnesses and time off as a result.
When used properly, these programs education and benefit the employee, leading to improvements in the workplace and even reduction in costs to the employer.
Reducing Absenteeism
One of the ways wellness programs become effective for the business is by reducing the employee’s number of personal illness days. Employees call off work because they are sick but, some studies indicate that that’s expensive to the employer. Mercer’s report from 2010 indicates that 8.7 percent of all payroll costs account for missed work. Those who are ill and come to work are less productive, too.
Reducing Stress
It may be possible to use a wellness program to help reduce stress from on-the-job occurrences. Workplace illnesses, replacement costs and absenteeism often happens as a result of the amount of stress an employee has in the workplace. With this type of policy in place, it can effectively reduce the amount of stress the individual has.
Promoting Healthier Lifestyles
Another benefit of this type of program is to promote a healthier lifestyle. Encouraging employees to eat healthy lunches and to be active in the workplace improves their overall health. Even providing a place for employees to work out can improve this type of lifestyle which directly impacts the company because it keeps employees in the office without getting sick.
Reducing Insurance Premium Costs
A side effect to improving the health and well being of the employee is being able to see a reduction in premium costs for insurance benefits. Healthier employees result in fewer claims and premiums paid out. That, in the long term, can result in lower costs for the business.
Overall, wellness programs benefit everyone within the business. Not only are employees healthy, but they are happier. This can, in many ways, reduce the amount of turnover a business has and even increase the overall employee morale. A wellness program could be just what you need to improve your employee confidence and happiness.
