How To Improve Employee Health Without A Huge Investment

Many companies are finding the importance of investing in employee health. Encouraging your employees to get in shape can have significant results on your productivity along with the healthcare costs of the company as well. With so many illnesses and sick days costing companies billions of dollars a year, it has created a large following for companies hoping to reduce costs and improve employee health. Wellness programs have been around for quite some time and they are quite popular but over the past few years they have gotten even more popular as employers are looking for ways to focus on improving employee health.

Health fairs are common among larger companies as they help to raise awareness about health issues and other things to their employees. The other good thing about health fairs is that you can also focus on getting your employees to get their vaccinations and to have free health checks. They are used as a way to educate and prevent a lot of problems, which can really improve the health of your employees and will help you to find a way to decrease costs for the organization.

In addition to holding a health fair there are other things that you can do in order to improve your organization. Wellness programs are a great option as they give you a chance to focus on the issues that need to be fixed. Wellness programs may include parts of the health fair but they may also include other things as well like in-house gyms and other programs that encourage employees to get in shape. Even if you have a smaller company, you can still find a way to introduce a quality wellness program that will raise awareness about employee health and can help you to improve their health. Reducing healthcare costs needs to be of great importance to your company.

Some of the things that you should consider as you are creating a wellness program include the following:
- How do you get your employees to exercise?
- What can we do to encourage healthier eating?
- Do we have money for an on-site gym or offering gym memberships?
- Will our insurance company provide us with health screenings?

There are many questions to ask but these can give you basic information that you need to figure out where you need to get started with your wellness program. Have you considered hosting a charity event for the company? How about hosting a 5K run? This is a great way to kick off your wellness program as it encourages your staff to get involved but also it will encourage your employee's families to participate as well.

Wellness programs are not only for the large companies as smaller companies actually have a larger need for them. Since they do not have as many staff members it is common to see their employees filling several different roles with the company. Losing an employee to an illness can dramatically hurt your company's productivity and will make it even more costly on your organization. This is why you need to focus on getting a good wellness program in place so you don't have employees taking off a lot of time and causing huge slow downs in productivity.

What else can you do to improve employee health without spending a lot of money? How about taking a walk around the building for a short meeting with your employees instead of just standing in the office and chatting? This is a simple way to get in some exercise and some sunlight that you need. Promote walking and encourage your employees to focus on getting in exercise where they can.