Educating employees on the high cost of poor health

As costs to businesses associated with the poor health of their employees continues to rise, many companies are finding ways to encourage employee health.Companies know that healthy employees are more productive and cost the company less money in many ways.However, in order to help employees make the changes in their lifestyle to be healthier, companies may find it necessary to train employees on the high cost of poor health.

This can be tricky because even though most employees are fairly interested in company success, most will not be motivated to change their lifestyle simply because poor health is costing the company money.They will want to know how poor health is costing them more personally.Here are a few tips for educating employees on the high cost of poor health.

Think like Employees

Setting up trainings to teach employees how the company is spending more money because of employee poor health will be most effective if the trainings relate to employees.By educating employees on how poor health with affect them, employers stand to motivate change in employees.For example, teaching employees that smokers will pay higher health insurance rates or that letting oneself become too unhealthy may cost them their job are great motivators.Also, by showing how the costs of poor health trickle down into holiday bonuses or salary cuts may also be a great way to demonstrate how employee poor health is costing the company money.

Bring an Outside Source

Sometimes hearing that the company is spending more money because of employee poor health from a coworker or supervisor is not very convincing.However, if a company was to bring in an expert in the field to speak generally about the rising costs of poor health, then employees may by more motivated to listen.This is also a good method to help give employees a general message about the rising costs of poor health.Finding someone to give this presentation would not be difficult given the fact that the rising cost of poor health is affecting businesses all over the world.

Be Strategic

When presenting on a topic that will affect employees, companies should be strategic in their presentation methods.Gathering the entire staff to tell them they are unhealthy and therefore costing the company money may not be the best strategy.However, if a company were to create a series of educational trainings regarding the costs of poor health in the workplace, they might have more success in helping employees understand how serious a matter poor health really is.These trainings could move from covering the general costs of poor health around the country to covering the costs of poor health in the specific company or even division of a given company.Some companies may even want to present ideas for solutions to the problem at these trainings.

Educating employees on the risings costs of poor health can be difficult because individual employees may not feel responsible for the problem.Companies have the difficult task of showing how the rising costs will affect employees in one way or another.If companies begin to think like their employees, consider bringing in outside sources, and are strategic in their delivery of information, they will be able to help their employees understand the importance of maintaining a healthy lifestyle and hopefully motivate them to change.