Get employees to take health seriously: What’s working
September 23, 2009 by Jared BilskiPosted in: Communication, Health care, In this week's e-newsletter - benefits, Latest News & Views, Pay and benefits
Another consequence of the poor economy: Employees are cutting back on preventive healthcare measures in an effort to reduce expenses.
People are trading nutritional eats for processed and fast foods. They’re also spending less time exercising.
That means now’s a great time to refocus on preventive health care. If your company already has a wellness program, it’s a good idea to make sure these proven features are included:
3 areas to check
Referrals from claims and on-site screenings. Most wellness programs pinpoint at-risk employees by relying solely on the employees’ honesty in responding to health assessments.
Certain wellness program providers use a combination of data to determine those at-risk for chronic conditions.
Example: OptumHealth uses on-site health screenings, claims and referrals to assess if an employee is at-risk.
This approach can help to identify up to 10 times more at-risk employees.
Wellness consultants. These individuals are assigned to a company to help develop a wellness strategy, plan promotions, interpret reports and gauge the overall success of the company’s wellness program.
Benefit: By keeping a close eye on a company’s wellness program, consultants can tweak and fix problems on the spot.
Cross-trained coaches. These coaches take a big-picture approach to helping employees with various lifestyle-related health issues.
Example: Smoking. There are a significant number of people who won’t try to quit smoking simply because they’re concerned about gaining weight in the process — a common problem.
A cross-trained coach will help an employee quit smoking, while also ensuring that he or she makes smart nutritional choices to avoid the common weight gain.
Tags: Cross-trained coaches, On-site Screenings, Preventative health care, Referrals, wellness, Wellness consultants
September 25th, 2009 at 8:56 am
With increased benefits costs, higher co-pays and fears of taking time off to see the doctor unless sick, is this any surprise that people are forgoing preventative health care measures? Nutritional food is expensive as opposed to cheap and easy comfort foods. While I am a proponent of wellness programs, people are trying to survive doing more than one job at the office and also juggling responsibilities at home. It is no surprise that there may be litte time for physical ativity if peple are working late and often doing work related trasks on their home computers.
September 25th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
I agree with Carla. So many companies have made cuts to benefits such as vacation/PTO days, sick days, etc. while increasing the work loads of many employees. Not only are employees fearful of taking time off to see the doctor unless sick, they also can’t afford to because they are hanging onto those few paid days or half days from work for when they really need them for themselves or their children.
Add that concern on top of the employees who may have kept their jobs but either had their pay frozen or even reduced. And those same employees may have also experienced an increase in their cost for health insurance coverage and/or copays. When you are having an increasing number of employees who may have never before lived paycheck to paycheck but are having to do it now, they are watching every penny and will not waste it on a wellness visit.
So in return for all of the cuts that companies have made or freezes they have also made, as flu season approaches we will have employees at work infecting others. We will have more employees eating fast food out of convenience and inexpensive cost. And as for smokers, that has become their stress reliever or their only “break” from work during a stressful day. And we wonder why the government is wanting to intervene by mandating paid sick days for American workers?