How overweight employees hurt their employers

Healthcare costs are constantly rising and your overweight employees are one of the biggest reasons why you may be forces to pay outlandish health insurance premiums. There aren't too many options when it comes to reducing health care costs, but one thing you can do is implement wellness programs to encourage your overweight employees to drop some weight. Overweight employees tend to have more health problems than other people and they visit the doctor more frequently. Obesity is a problem and most people don't take it seriously. Obesity increases your risk for cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other cardiovascular diseases. Since overweight employers are at risk for so many problems, insurance companies cannot afford to pay for all of the treatments they need. This is why employers are being forced to pick up the bill.

In medical costs alone, employers can expect to pay an extra $51,019 per 100 employers. This total only gets higher when you have more overweight employees added to your staff. How about the cost to pay for sick leave, lost production, disability, and workers comp? This amount combined with the health insurance averages out to be a whopping $13 billion.

Overweight employees also hurt their co-workers. An employee that is in good health and doesn't have any major medical issues will pay more money for their health insurance because they have been placed into a pool with their obese coworkers. This is really frustrating for the individuals that only use their health insurance for annual check-ups and prescriptions. Since there are no clear rules on how the health insurance is pooled, it actually makes it easier for some people to be obese. The overweight employee is not punished for being obese, but their healthy coworkers are. This is an unfortunate situation for every company. To prevent healthy employees from being punished, several employers have begun implementing wellness programs. The wellness programs are designed to make the overweight employees lose weight and reduce the additional financial burden they place on their employer and co-workers.

How else can an overweight employee hurt their employer? One way is to take sick leave because this forces the employer to find a replacement while this person is out of the office. The training costs alone can cost the employer thousands of dollars. In addition to the training costs, the employer is also forced to deal with the lost production costs due to this employee that is out on sick leave or disability.

So if you haven't implemented a wellness program, now is the time. With a wellness program, the company will take responsibility for the employee. They will need to find ways to encourage them to lose weight and live a healthier lifestyle. Most companies will do this by forcing the overweight employees to pay additional health insurance costs, since they are the reason why the costs are higher to begin with. Other companies will take a different route, offering cash bonuses to employees that lose weight. Then there are the companies that use incentives like paid time off, weekend getaways or big financial bonuses for the employee that meets their weight loss goals.

Wellness programs are great, but they won't work without employee participation. A lot of overweight employees do not have the desire or willpower to start exercising. They do not care about the additional costs their employer has to pay and they refuse to do anything about their weight. The only route you can take with these employees is to hand them the bill and force them to pay more money for being overweight. Hire a counselor to come in and talk with your employees, they may be able to encourage them to do something about their weight issues.