One of the significant influencers of productivity in any organization is its employees’ health. Many businesses recognize this and invest in their workers’ health as part of their business growth strategy. Yet, there is a vital aspect of employee wellness that your company might be overlooking. This oversight might be costing you more and impacting your Return on Investment (ROI) as per the cost of the workplace wellness programs you provide.
You are likely unaware of this gap in employee healthcare which makes it easy for you to ignore its cost to your business. But no good business owner likes to leave money on the table. This article reveals the transformative shifts in healthcare and how you can maximize your workforce productivity by improving on what you already do.
When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied. – Herophilus
What Exactly is Good Health?
Have you ever heard the word Eudaimonia? It is a Greek word that means well-being. The basic idea behind eudaimonia is three-dimensional, and the three dimensions of well-being are:
- Physical
2. Psychological/Mental
3. Social
This concept proves that “Healthy” is not just the absence of physical disease. “Healthy” is total physical, mental, and psychosocial wellness. Hence, if one or more components of wellness are absent, the individual is not optimally healthy. This means that simply having access to healthcare does not make one healthy. Unfortunately, in the US, some people work daily, have health insurance, and regularly see a physician, yet remain unhealthy.
Furthermore, the concept of optimal health looks different for everyone. What is appropriate for one person may not be suitable for another, even if these individuals have identical diagnoses. Hence, individualized healthcare is inevitable in achieving optimum health. Thankfully, the concept of eudaimonia can be applied to all aspects of well-being, including individual health, population health, and the health of organizations and workplaces.
Why Your Workplace Needs a Better Employee Wellness Strategy
In the US, organizations lose about $4.1 billion annually indirectly to anxiety in the workplace. 88% of those losses are attributed to lost productivity and not absenteeism.
Full-time employees in the US spend over one-third of their time at work, which makes the workplace the perfect environment for introducing healthcare programs. Accordingly, about 80 percent of all large employers in the US provide at least one wellness program. These programs use organizational support to advance the concept of workplace eudaimonia. The programs provide easy access to healthcare services and increase the employee’s overall health quality.
Healthcare, insurance, and wellness is a multi-trillion-dollar annual business in the US. So, if your company offers your employees health insurance and health and wellness programs, you are spending large sums of money providing these benefits. It only makes good fiscal sense that your company checks to know if you and your employees are getting the most value.
However, for many companies, monitoring, in this instance, means assigning categories. So it is likely that your company categorizes employees based on their disease state and related financial burdens. In other words, the focus is on what is “seen.” — sick care over disease prevention — and psychological conditions in these cases are ignored.
Some of such conditions are stress and anxiety disorders, which also significantly detriment to a person’s health. This can also impact an organization’s profit in terms of the cost related to lost productivity.
In the US, organizations lose about $4.1 billion annually indirectly to anxiety in the workplace. 88% of those losses are attributed to lost productivity and not absenteeism. Employees who said they experienced high anxiety levels at work were almost twice as likely to suffer from multiple work-related injuries than workers who did not.
Similarly, stress in the workplace is an increasing medical and economic problem for three reasons:
- Stress affects an organization’s staff’s morale and financial success. The American Institute of Stress says that approximately one million Americans miss work daily because of stress.
2. 60%–80% of outpatient clinic visits are for stress. According to research, they are also associated with all leading physical causes of death, including heart attacks and strokes.
3. Workplace stress is responsible for 120,000 deaths annually, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Also, visit www.osha.gov for more information.
Employees’ Mental Health Is As Important as Their Physical Health
Research estimates that the annual cost of depression in the US is $43.7 billion. Of the $43.7 billion spent annually on depression, 55% of the annual cost of depression is related to loss of workplace productivity.
Employers generally do not recognize the importance of mental and physical well-being as a uniform concept. Nor do they understand the effect on the employee’s health, attendance, and company profits. Unfortunately, there continues to be a stigma attached to mental health and the erroneous perception that seeking mental healthcare is a sign of individual weakness instead of strength.
Hence, depression continues to take a significant toll on workers in the workplace. Research estimates that the annual cost of depression in the US is $43.7 billion. To put this number in perspective, if your employees are depressed, it is more expensive than if they have heart disease ($43 billion) and arthritis ($38 billion). Of the $43.7 billion spent annually on depression, 55% is related to loss of workplace productivity. Companies can do a lot to de-stigmatize mental illness by providing resources to help their employees understand it and seek assistance in a mental health crisis. Also, visit www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression for more information.
Most large companies in the US provide Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs). While EAPs offer behavioral health counseling and coaching, only those participating can benefit from these services. In some instances, the usage rate at the high end is as low as 20% of an organization’s workforce. Also visit www.hhs.gov/employee-assistant-program for more information.
Hence, if you want to maximize productivity, there’s a need for your organization to be more proactive in recognizing how detrimental poor mental health can be to your workforce. You can combat these shortfalls by providing your workers with health literacy and coaching programs. Because employees spend more than a third of their time at work, the workplace is a logical choice for exposure to positive information and education that shines a light on mental health.
Holistic Wellness Approach Is the Productivity Boost Your Company Needs
Organizations that look at all avenues to improve profit are looking for innovative ways to implement health and wellness programs that embrace evidence-based concepts because there is proof that these programs work and provide good health outcomes for those who use them.
Organizations wanting to sustain financial growth must acknowledge that health, healthcare, the worker, and company profits are irrevocably linked. Moreover, as new cultural and economic changes are birthed and mature, organizations that embrace these changes early on typically survive, while those who fight change die; think Sears and Amazon or Blockbuster Videos and Netflix.
Modern evidence-based treatment models have begun to recognize the holistic benefits of self-care. Self-care is the ability to engage in self-awareness and self-regulation to safeguard your health. Self-care is most efficacious when the individual can adeptly strike a positive balance between physical, psychological, and spiritual needs. In addition, self-care can be an essential tool for minimizing professional burnout and fatigue.
Successful organizations are always looking for opportunities to improve their brand. They comprehend that employee health is one area where brand awareness can improve. When organizations are vested in helping their workforce become healthier, the entire business eventually benefits.
Organizations that look at all avenues to improve profit are looking for innovative ways to implement health and wellness programs that embrace evidence-based concepts because there is concrete proof that these programs work and provide good health outcomes for those who use them.
So, suppose your organization is seeking to strengthen health and wellness programs. In that case, you need to rethink, redesign, and modify health promotion systems to take advantage of modern healthcare conventions, which include revising healthcare services, education, literacy, and goals. These revisions should enhance the chances of healthy outcomes for current employees and bolster your organization’s reputation when targeting and recruiting new employees.
A Harvard University research study says employee wellness programs are the most critical element in boosting the quality of an organization’s customer service. When employees are content and healthy, they have an easier time communicating positively and more professionally with customers, which causes customers to be happier and purchase more. Also, click Do Wellness Programs Work? | Harvard Medical School to read the complete article.
Hence, if your company’s mindset shifts towards disease prevention, it is a win for ALL the players:
- The employees are healthier and feel and function better in and out of the workplace.
2. Customers are happier with your service and tend to buy more.
3. Your company’s profits increase.
Wellness in the Workplace has developed. The HEALS Wellness Method has been designed to help forward-thinking organizations key into this modification ahead of the competition.
The HEALS Wellness Method is a health promotion framework that utilizes Registered Nurses to guide and educate organizations on identifying, customizing, and implementing cost-effective wellness programs.
Click the link below to get information on how we can implement The HEALS Wellness Method for your organization.
