4 Reasons Why You Need a Workplace Wellness Program

July 23, 2021 | Tags: Employee Benefits Wellness

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No matter what type of business you run, employee health and retention should be a top priority to ensure the longevity of your company. One way to increase employee health and well-being, while containing healthcare costs, is by offering a wellness program as part of your employee benefit package. This includes resources that can help your employees improve their eating and exercise habits, provide preventive care incentives, help them quit smoking and more.

Here are four ways wellness programs can improve the health of your employees and your business:

Contain Healthcare Costs

It’s no secret that the unhealthier your employees are, the possibility of high healthcare costs increases. Chronic conditions and unhealthy behaviors like obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, physical inactivity and smoking are a major driver of the nation’s $3.5 trillion in annual healthcare costs, but can be controlled or even prevented through a healthy lifestyle. By providing your employees with wellness programs that incentivize positive behavior change, you can keep your employees happy and healthy. This reduces substantial healthcare costs by decreasing the occurrence of medical claims and chronic diseases.

Reduce Absenteeism

Healthy employees are less likely to miss work due to illness or injury. By providing wellness resources for your employees and promoting a health-positive work environment, you can in turn improve employee productivity and motivation, while reducing health-related absenteeism.

Improve Mental Health

Not only do wellness programs offer healthy eating and exercise support, but they also can provide mental health tools and resources to offer fully-integrated wellness coverage. Stress, depression and anxiety can be just as detrimental to your employee’s health as physical illness, so it’s important to consider mental health support when choosing a wellness program.

Increase Employee Morale and Retention

Workplace wellness programs show you care about the well-being of your employees. This helps promote a workplace culture of wellness and gives the employee more incentive to stay at the company. Companies have the option to offer monetary incentives or other rewards for healthy behavior when they elect a wellness program, which increases employee morale and participation.