Wellness Programs--How cost effective are they?

kprillaman

I have received numerous invites on attending seminars on how to establish a wellness program in our company, not to mention the people who want to stop by "just for a few minutes" to tell me all about their wellness program they could offer us. They present these good reasons to implement something like this, but as with everything else, it costs money. Can someone give me a realistic answer concerning these wellness programs, have they helped the employees? Does it help with insurance costs? Are they really worth it? Thanks.

sdiconza

We offer smoking cessation, and subsidized weight watchers and gym memberships. We have not done a comprehensive review of return on investment, but I can tell you that sick days are down and morale appears to be way up for those that have quit smoking and lost weight. The long term insurance costs are not clear yet, but we do get a discount for these programs from our carrier.

jdeery

Wellness has become a focus at our company because of the impact it could have on insurance costs. You have healthier employees, you have less insurance claims, thus costs stay the same or go down. I have also received a lot of calls from vendors who want to see their programs, but there are low/no cost alternatives to help get this going. For example:

• employee walking club (groups get together at a set time each week)
• Weight Watchers at work - you provide a place for people to meet, and participants pay their own fees. Its convenient, great for moral support......
• Work sponsored "teams" for charity intiatives such as breast cancer walk, MS-150
• form a wellness committe made p of someone from HR to lead it and then employees from other depts to help brainstorm ideas
• lunch and leanrs - once a month have a speaker in to talk about a something wellness related (nutrition, aging) a lot of times, the speaker will do it for free in order to get their name out to potential clients

Your health insurance broker/carrier should be able to help you with this as well!

 

cbedal_hotmail_com

We have a wellness program in place and I have not been able to capture hard dollars but I have been able to see a noticable improvement in our morale.   I also note that it is great assistance in the recruitment process and declined useage of sick time.   I am a believer that it isn't just about hard dollars, healthy and happy workers are productive workers and that is when it really impacts the bottom line.