Rewards for good health?

Employee health is a growing concern for many businesses. Since employee health issues are really taking their tolls on businesses in the form of decreased production, time off, and health care expenses, many businesses have found that offering rewards to their employees that try to live healthier can really improve these problems. Employees are motivated by a number of things from compensation to extra time off. You have to understand your employees and what motivates them in order to come up with a quality benefit package to reward the employees that do try to live healthier lifestyles.

Before you start offering rewards, you need to start looking at the things that are concerning to your company. Do you have a lot of people smoking? How many employees are obese? Do you have a large number of employees that do not exercise and live sedentary lifestyles? Identify all the areas that need improvement by your company in order to make the entire company healthier.

Take a look at the existing health and wellness programs that have been introduced by other companies. This will allow you to see things that you need to tweak and things that you need to add into your program in order to make it effective.

What are your goals with the employee health program? Would you like to reduce employee absenteeism or are you seeking to improve the overall productivity of your company. Even if you are looking to cut down on the number of employees that are calling in sick all the time, you will see a number of other benefits that occur as a result of introducing a strong employee health program.

A good program will encourage your employees to take notice of their lifestyle choices and the way they are currently living. The goal is to encourage the employees to step up and start working out, losing weight, quit smoking, and living a generally healthier lifestyle. In addition to this you should also push your employees to visit their doctor yearly in order to receive a physical examination and to get shots that can help to prevent the flu and many other things from occurring.

Depending upon the size of your business, consider holding a free health clinic day. This will allow all of your employees to come and have their blood sugar tested and their cholesterol levels tested along with other things to see how healthy they are. Some health companies will also administer necessary shots like the flu shot, tetanus shot, hepatitis shots and others if your employees are not caught up with their shots.

At the health clinic day, you should also hold a meeting where all of the employees can come in and hear about the things that they can change in their life to live healthier. Simple things like learning how to quit alcohol and smoking can truly improve their life but until a doctor shows them how, you may have some employees that speculate if it is true.

Rewards can work to motivate your employees to get healthy. Try using Health Savings Accounts and reward the employees with compensation in the account if they are able to accomplish some of the goals they have established for themselves pertaining to living a healthier and active lifestyle.

Implementing wellness programs do work and they are a wonderful way to get people to pay attention to their health. Studies have found that for every $1 you invest into the program, you will get a return of $24. This is a huge return rate and it's one of the best things you can do for your company and for the health of the people that make your company run effectively.