Corporate health programs are targeted at health issues that are preventable. Employee insurance is necessary, but many of the employee health problems are avoidable. Don’t believe me? Take a look at these facts from the WELCOA website:

• Chronic diseases—preventable things like heart disease, cancer, stroke, etc.— cause 70 percent of deaths in America and are responsible for three fourths of health care spending.
• Almost 66% of the increase in health care spending can be attributed to increasingly unhealthy lifestyle behaviors; most prominent among these is obesity.
• Employees who are considered to be high-risk for certain health conditions can be expected to account for 25% of total medical costs; this according to a large study of six large private-sector and public-sector employers. Since this analysis did not include the costs of moderate risk levels or other risk factors, the total impact of unhealthy lifestyle on employer medical costs is much higher than 25%.
• Recent research indicates that there is a direct relationship between modifiable lifestyle risks and lower worker productivity, and relevant data suggest that the costs to employers in lost productivity due to poor employee health may be substantially more than the direct medical and disability costs.

Corporate health programs are there to help provide employees with the resources they need to improve their health. These health interventions can include weight loss programs, smoking cessation programs, health monitoring for high risk employees and many other programs.

Is There Evidence to Support the Effectiveness of Corporate Health Programs?

Harvard University recently published a study in the December 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review that sites several advantages that employee wellness programs provide.  According to their meta-analysis of 36 different case studies they have found the following results:

• For ever dollar spent on employee wellness programs medical costs fell about $3.27 and employee absenteeism costs fell by about $2.73.
• Overall the wellness programs saved companies a total of $358 per employee. The companies spent about $144 per employee, and so as stated above the average ROI was $3.27 per employee.

As you can see there are many benefits to corporate health. Employees who work for companies with good employee wellness programs tend to be happier at work, and companies tend to save money. What better benefit than those?

Whether you’re an employee or employer maybe you should take a second look at what you’re company is doing to help take care of the health of employees. For more facts and information concerning corporate health you might want to take a look at this free corporate wellness resource from WELCOA.

Stay tuned for next weeks article on the types of corporate health programs, and the businesses they work best for.