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Employee Health Promotion: Making It Work
Employee Health Promotion: Who Benefits?
Now that two-thirds of the North American population have obesity-related health issues, complications and chronic conditions, people are starting to pay attention to the long range consequences of carrying excess body weight. Company health and wellness programs have been operating to address the disparity between the level of illness and the status of health, since the 1970s, but have been ineffective as an intervention. As the gap between wellness and illness comes wider, the American public is re-examining company health and wellness programs as a solution to the growing problem of an obese workforce and the resulting unmanageable costs of maintaining this unhealthy lifestyle.
Employee Health Promotion: Learning from Past Mistakes
De-centralized delivery and unfocussed application of data has resulted in the present model of company health and wellness programs. Historically, employee health promotion programs lack the capacity to produce the desired effect on the health of Americans; weight problems have increased since their inception, not decreased. Clearly, more comprehensive data collection and program application is necessary to produce an anticipated outcome. How can this be done?
According to detailed studies of company health and wellness strategies past, previous attempts to implement employee health promotion programs showed that two key design components were missing: the programs weren’t specific to each company’s employment demographics; and, within these only some employees were represented Both of these are lapses in application.
Learning from the failures generated by a passive application of the first company health and wellness programs and moving forward to a solution-based, structured program recognizes an active plan for engaging and increasing employee participation across all ranks and levels of health. The use of ongoing evaluative internal controls as planning instruments upholds increasingly more accurate methods of employee health promotion implementation.
Employee Health Promotion: Who Needs to Increase Productivity?
A lucrative outcome for American businesses relies on the health of their workforce. Improving the level of wellness in the United States is not in dispute, nor is the value of efficient productivity. Motivating employers to take initiative and actively pursue this deficit in the industry is the current issue and a task worthy of tackling.
Scrutinizing healthy employees as a resource requires a modification to the present perception from which the labor force is viewed. Company resources constantly require care, upgrading, and searching for more economic methods of extracting them. Profits are measured by the extent to which production exceeds cost. How is production improved?
Company Health and Wellness Programs are a Productivity Resource
Investing in the potential of employees to produce at their best rate of efficiency will maximize the margin for profit. Employers often exert pressure to produce more but the constraints that reduce production are not addressed and continue to perpetuate a cycle of under-production and stress. Employee health promotion is the best method yet, of containing this non-productive cycle and opening up avenues for growth.
Writer Bio: Charlene Rennick is an internationally published author with a diverse background in writing and research. Rennick is currently the Editor for six different health promotion for small business websites including: Wellness Proposals, Infinite Wellness Solution's and Infinite Wellness Online. Rennick is also a regular contributor to the American Chronicle.
