Return on Investment for your Employee Health Screening (The Guardian : 16/01/2018)

According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 75% of employers’ health care costs and productivity losses are related to employee lifestyle choices.

While small improvements make wellness initiatives pay off, it can be challenging to implement and achieve. People with most severe problems may have little interest in lifestyle changes, and even those that do find it very difficult.

Considering that a $1 investment in wellness programs saves $3 in health care costs, according to the Wellness Council of America, it is good business for companies to help provide employees with the information and tools that will empower them to adopt healthy behaviors.

Carefully designed health screening programs help uncover current or potential medical conditions and empower the employees to seek treatment and healthier lifestyle choices before conditions become more critical and more costly to manage. As a foundation benchmark for your wellness program, it provides an opportunity for identifying potential risk factors for future health problems and promoting a healthier lifestyle.

How can your company achieve and measure its own success by offering health screenings as part of a comprehensive corporate wellness program? When designing such a program, consider taking the following steps:

  1. Create a sustainable culture of health from top down

Keywords here are sustainability and top-down support. From the Chief Executive down through the ranks, everyone must show their commitment to healthier lifestyles, including participation in the health screenings that benchmark health status and the programs offered to improve it. Buy-in at every level makes a huge impact and shows that your company is committed to an ongoing culture of health that permeates the whole organization. One way to ingrain a culture of health throughout your organization is to include participation and lifestyle improvement among the metrics of every employee’s annual review.

  1. Make Engagement easy

In this information age, we are all bombarded by messages, so busy employees can easily miss a single email or a flier. Make your communication as easy as possible for your employees to get informed and enthused for the screening.

  1. Location, location, location

Select the optimal location for the health screenings and ensure employee privacy and confidentiality will be maintained when planning the logistics.

  1. Get professional help

Ensure the selected health provider has the results on hand and is prepared to explain what a participant’s data means and how to act on it. Insist on an anonymous, aggregate report identifying health risks and trends for your employee population so as to determine targeted intervention strategies as well as function as a benchmark for monitoring and evaluation of your wellness program.

  1. Track and Measure Success

The benefits of health screening initiative that drive a comprehensive wellness program – one that addresses multiple facets of employee health (Physical, mental, social, financial, etc is likely going beyond cost savings – you can experience reductions in employee absenteeism and staff turnover, higher morale, and greater employee engagement. It should be considered an investment in your people and not just another cost on the balance sheet.

 

Reply back to bhakti@impactafya.com or call +255 754 694 643 with your feedback. We welcome your suggestions for corporate wellness tips 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 Advisor for the Africa Business Portal and the Past President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Tanzania.

 

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