Is Your Business Sustainable (The Guardian – 03/05/2016)

An excerpt from my presentation at the African Sustainable Business Summit at the Hyatt Kilimanjaro, Dar es Salaam on 14th & 15th April, 2016

——————————————————————————————————————————

We hear the word sustainability daily – the reason why sustainability is so important is that it is something that crosses lines and brings together groups to focus on similar and combined efforts. It is something that we all care about.

What if a business not putting a priority on healthy employees? If you are simply paying more for healthcare every year and ignoring employee health and wellness, your model is not sustainable. It is missing the core of sustainability – ability to endure and long term survival especially when you consider that over time, the human capital asset appreciates, whereas all other assets are depreciated.

So the question is: Are you managing employee health as one of your mission critical systems? Sustainability is important and we need it all areas. When you ask yourself: Is my business sustainable, go a step further and ask about your business health and your healthcare plan and ask another question – is your healthcare plan sustainable? Our current healthcare model focuses on fixing what is broken instead of keeping away from breaking in the first place.

Employee health and wellness is both an end goal but an enabler of your business growth and sustainability and cuts across all 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals. The World Health Organization states that “Better health is central to human happiness and well being. It also makes an important contribution to economic progress, as healthy populations live longer, are more productive and save more”. According to the Harvard Business Review, “Not only are wellness programs valuable for organizations and employees, they are the biggest hope for fixing a national crisis”.

Your business is a microcosm of society and an important and unleveraged setting for health improvement and risk reduction with a unique power to reframe the mindset around health itself – from one of sickness to wellness.

Corporate health care programs typically focus on health insurance and medical cost assistance. In contrast corporate wellness programs focus on promoting healthy behaviors and correcting employees poor health in a way that also enhance the operation and productivity of the organization and is sustainable in the long run. Healthy behavior from workplace invariably transcends to employee homes and communities.

Tanzanian businesses are best placed to change the equation where health is something thought about and practiced by running to the doctor’s office, to one where health is practiced daily through small lifestyle habits. This proactive stance towards health enhances employees (and their families) lives and reduces future health costs.  Businesses can:

• Help create a national culture of health and wellness
• Promote and create enabling environment for healthy behaviors to preserve older workers and to attract and retain talent
• Embed wellness in the company culture with leadership commitment – it is not simply an HR issue
• Use benchmark surveys and metric to measure and evaluate impact
• View well-being as a leading indicator of employee capabilities and future business performance and sustainability

Businesses have an excellent opportunity to protect and promote health and well being of current and future generations and NOW IS THE TIME TO ACT………..

Reply back to bhakti@impactafya.com with your feedback and we welcome your suggestions for corporate wellness issues you’d like to see covered in our future columns.

Bhakti Shah, MPH is the Founder and Managing Director of ImpactAfya Ltd, collaborating with Workplace Options and Mayo Clinic, USA to provide Corporate Wellness and EAP Solutions in East Africa. Bhakti is also the Immediate Past President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Tanzania and the Vice Chair for Malaria and HIV/AIDS for Rotary District 9211.