Wellness and the Workplace

The New Year is here, and it's time for new year's resolutions.  How about lose weight, or stop smoking, or simply get in better shape?  Any of these resolutions would have personal benefits, but all of these resolutions could have a professional pay off, too. 

As employers continue to look at ways to cut costs to increase a company's bottom line, one of the areas that is being studied is health care.  In a 2006 survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management Workplace Forecast, HR professionals identified "rising health care costs as the top factor that HR professionals believe will have the largest impact on the workplace."  In addition, "employers are shifting responsibility for managing employer-provided health care benefits from the employer to the employee."

It looks like companies are going to be proactive in addressing health care issues before they become crises.  Both smoking and diabetes can, under certain circumstances, be positively managed by changes in behavior.  Former smokers and diabetic patients who are able to manage their diabetes through diet and exercise are healthier employees in general.  Companies are seeing a resulting decrease in health care costs when these health issues are managed in a proactive fashion. 

Indeed, "Three-quarters of respondents (76.1 percent) rate Make Appropriate Choices Concerning Health and Wellness, e.g. nutrition, exercise, stress reduction, work-life effectiveness as an emerging content area that will be "most critical" for future graduates." 

Read a paper about employers' perspectives on the workplace, - information specific to the employer emphasis on wellness is on page 51.