Employee Health Programs: What You Should Know

What is an employee wellness program?

Employee wellness programs, which vary in scope, are changing the workplace environment for the better, even for small businesses. They provide an advantage that can help the company in attracting and retaining employees.

But wellness programs have also been found to improve the workplace environment itself. Even if you don’t have the budget for expensive solutions like a gym at work, there are steps a small business can take to create an appropriate and effective wellness program.

As a business owner or manager, you can look forward to the many benefits of a wellness program including some or all of the following:

• Reduce absenteeism
• Increase productivity
• Improving employee morale
• Increase employee loyalty and retention
• Improving participation and teamwork
• Reducing health care costs for employer-provided health insurance
• Reducing workers compensation costs

How to create an employee health program?

Although no two health programs are exactly alike, there are steps that must be taken when creating the program.

1. Make an evaluation

What type of program would suit your employees best? Do an internal assessment. Find out their health goals and what they would like to see in the company’s program. This will help you avoid doing things that employees won’t use.

• Survey employees of their health needs and concerns. Your insurance company may have forms to use, but it generally looks like this is.
• More and more employers are conducting health risk assessments for employees. that estimated 75% of large employers offer HRA as part of their employee health and wellness strategy.
• Wellness tools, like the ones you provide online Small Business Wellness InitiativeIt can make employee evaluations easy and inexpensive.

2. Obtaining management approval

Good senior management support translates into a more successful programme. Communicating the ROI is important, as well as educating them about how their departments can benefit from the employee wellness program.

3. Setting goals and objectives

Based on the assessment of your workplace, set goals and objectives for the company’s wellness program. For example, you may want to reduce the number of employees who smoke by a certain percentage.

4. Determine incentives and rewards

Including a rewards program motivates employees to participate and reach goals. These may be points that can be exchanged for gift certificates or cash prizes.

5. Develop your budget

This would be an investment, but the payoff could be more than worth it. Keep it simple if you need to, with a walking or jogging group, for example. Or invest some time and money offering incentives, healthy workplace snacks, fitness classes, or even professional trainers to work with your team.

6. Program development

Your program will depend on your needs and budget. It can feature components such as weight loss, smoking cessation, stress reduction, exercise programs, nutritional education, health clinics and vaccinations. No need to come up with something on your own, although a team of employees can come up with some great ideas. Find out what other software is available, and find some examples and templates to work with – searching on the internet can help you find all kinds of good information.

When creating a health program, make sure it is employee-focused and the benefits to your company will follow.