Fat Employees Take Their Toll On Healthcare

Dealing with obesity in the workplace can increase your companies health insurance costs dramatically. Many organizations find that fat employees will visit the doctor frequently and this will increase the health insurance costs for the company. You might also find that they will also end up taking a lot of sick days. This can increase your costs but it also leaves you dealing with lost productivity as you need to end up having other employees try and take on extra work and other things to get the work done.

Overweight employees are also prone to more accidents and injury claims according to many different studies. This also means you will need to pay more money for Worker's compensation claims not to mention the cost of dealing with lost workers.

Companies need to start stepping up against overweight employees and to find a way to encourage them to trim down and gain control over their health. The problem that you might run into is dealing with a discrimination lawsuit as the fat employees may feel that they are being unfairly targeted.

According to a study conducted by Duke University, fat workers will take 13 more absent days a year related to their health. Due to this a number of wellness programs have been created to help encourage employees to lose weight and to find a way to help your employees gain control over their weight issues.

Creating a workplace wellness program may consist of building an on-site gym or you might end up hiring a personal trainer to come in and help your employees learn how to exercise properly so they can manage their weight and have healthier bodies.

When you have healthier employees you will have happier employees. These individuals will be less likely to take time off and they usually come to work with more energy and enthusiasm. You will also find that they are less likely to take off time to visit the doctor for health issues. Companies will be able to see a decrease in their health insurance costs, which can allow you to pass along the savings to your staff or to work on saving the money for other needs.

Introduce the company wellness program after you take time to gather some insight from your employees. You need to get their opinions and to find out how they feel about it and to learn about the type of things that they would like to see happen as a result of the wellness program. To help you get started, here are a few things that you need to do:
1. Remove temptations. If you have vending machines that are filled with unhealthy foods it is now the time to clean them out and replace them with healthier snacks like fresh fruits and vegetables. This can prevent your staff from filling up on unhealthy foods that do not provide a consistent source of energy to them.
2. Offer exercise time. Another way to help encourage your employees to get in shape is by giving them extra time to workout. If you have an on-site gym, you want to really encourage your employees to use it and giving them an extra 15 minutes or longer to exercise is a great way to help the gym get some use!
3. Health risk assessments are great to help employees get on the right track with their health. You want to bring in some medical professionals that will show the employees where they rank with their health, which can give them a sense of direction as to how to lose weight or just to start caring for their health a little bit more.