Oct 26, 2015 4 min read

Has your employer challenged you with the task of lower the company’s health insurance cost?

Are you seeking to improve your employees’ health in a positive way, while increasing their productivity as well as keeping them motivated?

Are you looking to retain and attract quality employees because of the healthy benefits that your company offers?

Then…create a Corporate Wellness Program!

Corporate Wellness Programs are an excellent way to decrease health insurance cost, increase productivity and increase employee engagement.

To start an employee wellness program form a wellness committee by completing the following steps:

1. Ask employees, who have a passion for wellness;

2. Make sure upper management embraces and is on board to participate;

3. Have a diverse representation from all of your departments.

The committee doesn’t need to be large, but you want to be sure you have the right people as ambassadors to help start this initiative.

Then, set some attainable goals. While decreasing health insurance cost may be your overarching goal, there are other components you want to consider in how you will achieve these goals. You want there to be initiatives for employees to participate in your employee wellness program.

Consider holding lunch and learns, walking meetings during a certain time of day, and creating walking groups/routes throughout your campus/building. Once you start creating a culture of wellness, you can add on to your program.

Additional suggestions are: holding biometric screenings onsite for your employees; offering health fairs and tobacco cessation programs; and starting mini departmental competitions focusing on physical activity and/or weight loss.

Tie the rewards to insurance premiums or deductibles and watch the participation increase!

Typically programs will cost more than they save for the first few years on the bottom line. As you start to create a culture of wellness and have more employees participate in your programs employers can see a decrease for out of pocket expenses for physician visits, medication, and/or hospitalization year after year. Employers with healthier employees will spend less on direct medical costs and workers compensation and spend more time at work. Employee wellness programs should also be viewed as a benefit to your employees and as a retention tool to attract and keep high quality employees and maintain productivity!

For more information about Corporate Wellness and how to start a Corporate Wellness Program, please contact Louise Schultz, Corporate Wellness Manager with WHS Wilfred R. Cameron Wellness Center at 724.250.5237 or lschultz@whs.org.