Wellness and prevention programs

Helping employees establish and maintain a healthy lifestyle can have significant benefits for the individual as well as for the company that employee works for. Healthy employees can reduce the costs of healthcare and create more productivity for your company. Wellness and prevention programs can provide employers with healthier employees and less sick days from work.

What are wellness and prevention programs?
Wellness and prevention programs are specifically designed to give employees within the company an opportunity to live healthier life and to educate themselves on preventative ways to help reduce the costs of rising health insurance premiums. Everyone would agree that preventing a health disease like high cholesterol, or diabetes is always better and costs less than having to treat it. As employers come to understand this they are taking action into their own hands and establishing wellness and prevention programs for employees.

What are the benefits of wellness and prevention programs?
Well, besides the benefit of educating your employees there are several other benefits of using a wellness and prevention program in your company.


• Since most people spend more time at work than they do at home, it makes sense to give them some opportunities during work hours to educate themselves on being and living a healthy life. Statistics have shown that healthy employees are happier and more effective in getting their work done. Providing your employees with trainings, classes, and opportunities to be healthy and well, you are actually increasing productivity within the workplace.


•  As you implement some wellness and prevention programs that meet the needs of your employees you can actually begin to reduce the costs of healthcare and health insurance premiums. As you educate your employees how to be physically fit, lower cholesterol, relieve stress, or stop smoking you can decrease the amount of money you are paying for health insurance. The average smoker can cost a company around $1000 a year in insurance, not including the time lost for smoke breaks. The average stress related workers compensation claim can cost employers almost $13,500 a year. Think of the money you could save if you can prevent health issues like these and many others from occurring.


•  Employers in companies have also noticed that through these wellness and prevention programs, employee absenteeism has decreased dramatically. Fewer sick days are taken as employees learn to live healthy and avoid illness and health related diseases. As well as showing a decrease in employee absenteeism, employers have also seen a boost in employee morale as well as health.

Wellness and prevention program ideas
Since every company has different needs you will have to take a good look at your company employees to figure out which needs your employees need met. Here are some ideas on wellness and prevention programs:


• Obesity and weight control. Many employees with office jobs that sit all day and eat out of the vending machine have problems with obesity and weight. You can use wellness and prevention programs to train employees on healthy eating habits, or weight loss seminars.


•  Stress management. This is a big problem among employees all over the world, let alone the country. Managing stress is one of the best wellness and prevention programs you can use in your company.


•  Smoking cessation. If the majority of your employees smoke then you may consider implementing a smoking cessation wellness and prevention program to help cut back on wasted time as well as wasted money on health insurance.

Wellness and prevention programs can be extremely beneficial to employees as well as their employers. If you're experiencing high health insurance premiums and it's costing you more money than you want, you might consider implementing a wellness and prevention program.

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