When the employees are satisfied with the benefits offered by the company, including the health plan, the overall work satisfaction is high. In a recent study, 76% of employees who rated their benefits package as excellent or very good also gave high marks to their employer as a place to work. However, only 18% of those who rate their benefits poorly, gave high marks to their employer. Furthermore, satisfied employees are the best advertisement to attract new talents, which will in turn bring company better productivity. Another very important reason why to design a corporate plan is to help reduce the health costs. When the employees are less stressed and have healthier habits, their general health is better, resulting in lower health costs and less absenteeism.
A Health Plan That Works
To create a comprehensive program, employers must address both the individual risk factors affecting their employees (for example: smoking cigarettes, long-term sitting behind the desk, poor dietary choices, stress etc.), and the organizational factors (leadership commitment and support, strategic communications, employee engagement etc.) that help or hinder employees’ efforts to reduce their risks. The best programs create a culture of health, intertwining individual-level health promotion efforts with the overall company goals and objectives and ensuring that both leadership and the workplace environment provide support for healthy choices. A healthy company culture is built intentionally. “Total health” can be understood as a culture that is supportive of career, emotional, financial, physical and social well-being – not just an occasional road race. Examples include offering flexible work schedules, giving workers latitude in decision-making, setting reasonable health goals, providing social support, enforcing health-promoting policies and establishing a healthy physical environment (healthy food offerings, staircases instead of elevators, walking trails in and outside buildings, and treadmill workstations).
Programs are also most effective when they are clearly tailored to the goals and needs of specific populations, and provide sufficient opportunities for employee engagement and input. Also, including employees in designing the wellness program will bring bigger success in implementation of the program itself. And by conducting regular surveys to determine which aspects of health and wellness are important to employees, the wellness program can be completely tailored to their needs and end up being more successful.
Last, program evaluation is critical to maintaining accountability for a wellness program. To do this well, an evaluation plan should be developed at the start of a program so that useful baseline data collection can occur and be monitored over time. In that way, the health program will be continually adjusted to the changes in the company and to the needs of employees.
A Health Plan That Does Not Work
While financial incentive programs are popular, they may not achieve long-term behaviour change; instead, they may lead to resentment and even rebellion among workers. Also short-term campaigns are random acts of wellness that are not very effective. In fact, they may even do more harm than good by promoting quick fixes as opposed to long-term progress.
Employers sometimes hire outsiders or different vendors to address different issues – lifestyle coaches, employee assistance counsellors, case and disease management vendors, nurse lines, occupational health and safety experts, workers’ compensation specialists, disability managers, organizational development consultants etc. When hired independently, these vendors often work in silos, which can result in overlapping or duplicated work. In addition, relying on outside entities to attend to organizational needs may not get at the root of a systematic problem.
Sonja Vos Ralevska