Take the first step
Are your employees overweight? Are they obese? Do they smoke? Not long ago, you would have been well within your rights to avoid the answers to any of those questions. If your employees worked hard and produced, who cared about their health? But after years of medical research, those are all important and relevant questions, and if the answer to any is yes, you will want to consider a wellness program.
But why do you want to install a wellness program?
There are no wrong answers, of course, but if there is no why, if there is no vision, the program will flounder.
“Do you want to build benefits? Or, as the management team, is your goal to affect claim costs? Is it a combination of the two?” says Sally L. Stephens, founder and president, Spectrum Health Systems, Indianapolis. “Senior management, or whoever initiates it, needs to ask what they want to accomplish by putting a wellness program in. Too many people think it’s a solution but don’t think through clearly what their goals are.”
And if you and your executives do not support the program from its first breath, neither will your employees, so take the time to work with a private company for you and your employees to take a health risk assessment and a biometric screening.
Those highlight symptoms and conditions that might develop into larger problems in the future, both among individuals and your employee base as a whole. If you work with an outside company, the information will also be anonymous and in compliance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
“Some employees hesitate to give all their personal information to the insurance company,” Stephens says. “They don’t want the insurance companies to know they smoke or any of these other things. Working with a third-party provider ensures 100 percent confidentiality. They manage all the data, they manage the security, and the employer doesn’t have to worry about the data management.”
HRAs are often free, though if performed in person rather than on the Internet, they can cost between $5 and $25 per employee, depending on the quality and depth of the analysis. Biometric screenings typically cost anywhere between $50 and $150 per employee. You might also need to offer your employees an incentive, like a gift card or cash, for them to give their time to take the tests — because anything less than 70 to 80 percent participation leaves the results skewed and of less use for your business.
That cost might seem steep, but the information that is revealed can change your business. Do you want to know the overall health risk for your employees? Their weight and body mass index? Their exercise, nutrition and smoking habits? Even their levels of stress at work and at home? All of those figures are available and can help lay the groundwork for what you need to know to start a wellness program.
