Are unhealthy employees costing you money?

As a business owner, you understand that most of your decisions are driven by your bottom line.You base your decisions on whether or not you will see a return on your investment.It is for this reason that some companies do not see the value in allocating the time and resources to create an employee wellness program or even make the effort to provide employee wellness information.There are business owners who simply see employee health as a personal matter that should be dealt with away from the office.More experienced business owners, however, realize that ignoring employee health could be costing you money.Money that you could easily save with a relatively small investment of time and resources.Consequently, making the effort to care more for the well-being of your employees can have positive results that far surpass the money that you spend to keep health promotion programs running.

Unhealthy employees cost you money for a number of reasons.The first is the correlation between the cost of medical insurance premiums and workplace illnesses. Another way that unhealthy employees cost you money is in absences (employees calling in sick).The last big way that poor employee health costs you money is in decreased productivity.When the employee is not feeling well, has serious health issues on the brain, or is struggling with an addition of some kind, their quality of work suffers.

Determining just how much money unhealthy employees are costing you can be difficult, although there are a number of ways to estimate this number.Factors including gender, age, geographic location, salary, and marital status are used to produce estimates on the number of absences per employee, per-employee doctor visits and prescription costs, and percentage of employees who will be impaired during the workday.All of these factors should all be parts of your estimation.Additionally, estimated costs of health care for chronic conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, hypertension, insomnia, as well as obesity and heart-related conditions are needed to illustrate the liabilities that the employer faces in the form of higher premium payments.

After all, of this calculating and estimating, chances are that you will have found information sufficient to justify the implementation of wellness programs. Your wellness program should be individually created to address the specific needs that exist within your company.You may want to organize exercise incentives if you find weight loss to be one of the most important health changes needed or maybe a smoking cessation program if you find that you have employees who smoke but who need help quitting.
Employee health is a lot more affordable when you take care of your employees before they get sick.But you cannot successfully care for those employees unless you take the time and effort to learn more about their needs and what they would be willing to participate in.There is definitely a connection between sickness and productivity but it can be difficult to estimate the total number of expenses that the lost productivity actually adds up to.Nevertheless, with some planning you can create a health program for your company that is exciting and informative and that your employees can really rally behind.Everyone wins when you choose to help employees to improve their health.The employees benefit from the resources that you as a business leader have access to as well as the convenience of being able to learn more about personal health while at work and you benefit from decreased insurance premiums, lower absenteeism, and improved productivity.Make the investment into your employee's future and you will see the benefits return to you.