Different aspects of wellness programs

As the number of company wellness programs continue to rise, it provides employers with several different types of wellness programs to choose from. The investment in a wellness program is one of the best things you can do for your company. The cost of smoking and obesity are costing employers more than $13 billion dollars a year just to pay for health care costs, lost production costs, and sick leave.

So what are the benefits of introducing a wellness program? Here are a few:

• Reduced health insurance and life insurance costs


• Reduced absenteeism


• Higher productivity


• Increased employee morale


• Decreased employee turnover

With the benefits of a wellness program outweighing the disadvantages, it is up to the employer to find the right wellness program for their company. Usually the wellness program will include some of the following:

• A fitness program


• A diet and nutrition program


• Employee and family participation


• Smoking policies


• Stress reduction

Starting with the fitness program, most employees may not know what type of exercises they should be doing. If you have employees that sit all day long, stretching is vital to their health. Hold a meeting to show your employees the different types of stretches they can do at their desk. People that are in sedentary positions are often at an increased risk for blood clots and strokes. Many of your employees will also have lower metabolism due to their job because they do not get enough physical exercise. One way to help your employees with a fitness program is to start offering on-site access to exercise facilities. If you do not have room for an on-site gym, give them gym memberships. Make sure your employees actually use the gym memberships or you should start charging them the monthly fee for it.

One of the most-important parts of a wellness program is to encourage good nutrition. The workplace tends to be a hard place to maintain good nutrition. This is due to the fact that a lot of employees run to fast-food restaurants for lunch or they snack on sugary or salty snacks at their desk. To encourage good nutrition at work, you should replace the unhealthy foods in the vending machines. Offer soy snacks, nuts, fruits, granola bars, and vegetables. Instead of soda, offer water, juice, milk, or diet soda. When employees don't have the temptation in front of them, they are less-likely to indulge in the fatty foods.

In order to get the wellness program off to a good start, include the family of your employees. A wellness program that is family-inclusive is more successful because they have support from their co-workers and their family member. It also shows the employees that the company is truly invested in their employee's health because they want to involve the whole family in the wellness program.

Since smoking tends to be one of the biggest reasons why health care costs are higher, employers need to take the time to make a good smoking policy. Let your staff know the costs of smoking and the health complications that come along with smoking. You might want to consider charging your employees that smoke more money for health care coverage.

The last part of a good wellness program is to include time for stress reduction. Offer yoga classes or teach your employees how to deep breathe. Stress causes a lot of health problems like high blood pressure and headaches. Employees also tend to be less-productive when they are under a great deal of stress. Stress causes burn out and it can start to impact the entire office if you don't do something about it. Provide support counselors for your staff members and offer support for your staff members that are diagnosed with mental illnesses like depression.

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