Wellness Program Blog

5 Ways to Assess and Improve Your workers’ Health

Emotional health is a state of wellness that comes from understanding and acknowledging our emotions and finding appropriate ways to express them. As workers, we often bring emotional problems from our childhood or current family life into the workplace because we haven’t dealt with them effectively outside of work. This can seriously damage workplace relationships and lead to poor achievement and detrimental feelings all around.

Many tools and techniques exist for helping us better our emotional health. Some of the most common are given below, with real-life case histories illustrating their use. If an unpleasant mood or feeling persists over a length of time, do not hesitate to seek out a qualified professional. Company Wellness Programs usually have professional support already in place as part of their services.

1. Wellness Coaching / Wellness Counseling:
One of the hallmarks of emotional health is the willingness to ask for help when we need it. Confidential professional help, the coaching and counseling provided by employee assistance or wellness programs, can offer an external source of strength and insight for “working out” emotionally-based problems instead of “working them in” to your work.

2. Self-help Groups:
Self-help groups are designed to aid people in emotional situations in which they feel alone. The purpose of these groups is twofold: to allow people to safely feel and express their emotions, and to help break their isolation at work and/or in society at large and reintegrate them into society with the support of a peer group.

The classic self-help group is Alcoholics Anonymous, but thanks to technology, it’s possible to make connections with others that have common health challenges, no matter how unique the situation. People are taking advantage of tele-conference groups and social websites, such as sparkpeople.com and revolutionhealth.com. Company Wellness Programs often have such groups available through web-based or phone support. Progressive corporate wellness provider Exan Wellness, for example, offers teleconference cell groups and moderated wellness forums for interacting with others in a supportive, confidential and anonymous environment. People with shared challenges get together and discuss the emotional challenges they are facing at work or in other areas of their lives and work through modification together.

3. Journaling: Journaling is often recommended by counsellors as a way to help identify and process emotions. People record their emotions in writing as they experience them, in whatever form they wish. By helping the writer gain greater emotional clarity, journaling can help in making more emotionally informed decisions. In much the same way, letter writing enables people to identify and process the emotions they feel in relation to others. The letter does not have to be be sent or its contents shared: it simply supports a place for the expression of feelings.

An 18-year-old “army brat,” Brent has always done well at school, academically and athletically. But in his last year of high school, something seems to have happened to him. He has lost all interest in school, becoming moody and withdrawn.

Brent describes to his guidance counselor all the times he had to move when he was growing up. Each move wrenched him from his friends and forced him to play the role of the “new kid on the block.” The counselor suggests that Brent write letters to the friends he has missed over the years telling them how he felt. Finally, he has a chance to say a proper goodbye.

4. Assess Your Emotional Wellness: Companies that seek to boost employees’ interpersonal skills, or emotional intelligence in the workplace are more , according to ground-breaking journalist Daniel Goleman. And emotional intelligence is the buzzword in workplaces these days. Some Company Wellness Programs have information about emotional intelligence, or emotional health assessments. Seek out more information about emotional intelligence for better corporate wellness.

5. Friendships/Support Systems: Friendships allow people to feel supported in their emotional journeys. At the same time, they give people an opportunity to advance their empathetic skills. These skills are also valuable for workplace health. When we are empathic with fellow workers, we help them resolve detrimental or unhealthy emotions. New friendships are made through hobbies, classes, clubs, or even through web-based groups. Many people are finding emotional satisfaction by establishing relationships through Facebook and other social websites.

Occasionally workplace stress that is not dealt with in a healthy manner can be brought home. A 36-year-old mother of three, Sarah, wants to be a great wife, a great mother, and a success at her work. One day, drained after a long day at work, she shouted at her rambunctious children and threatened to hit her youngest son. Her behavior horrified her. To make matters worse, she believes she is a failure at her work as well as at motherhood. She watches with jealousy as younger co-workers advance much more rapidly up the corporate ladder despite having less experience than she has.

On the advice of a counselor, she decides to take time out for herself and take a course for amateur painters. It doesn’t take long before she strikes up a friendship with a single mom in the class. She once led a life very similar to Sarah’s before managing to achieve a better balance between work and family. Her new friend becomes a much-required sounding board for Sarah and offers her perspectives on her life that she hadn’t considered before.

It is apparent to virtually every American (especially those of us in business) that medical care costs are skyrocketing out of control. No one doubts that either the market will solve the concern OR the government will impose one on us. Managed care has failed from either a cost containment or quality of care perspective. Companies have reached the point where the cost of offering health care insurance is almost as burdensome as government regulation. It’s time for some new thinking on medical care and its impact on business and vice versa. “Corporate wellness” as an operational perspective instead of merely window dressing is one way to deal effectively with rising medical care costs.

The Insurance Issue

The first step in solving the concern is to realize that an employee’s health is their own responsibility. Expecting employers to offer unlimited health care insurance coverage is simply unrealistic and unreasonable. It’s time for employers (on a broad scale) to reconsider their role in offering health care insurance coverage. Instead of offering complete coverage for all workers through group plans, employers ought to begin to modify the burden of health coverage to those covered.

Here’s the approach. Provide catastrophic health care insurance as a group benefit to all workers with a big enough deductible (say $5000 per employee) to make the cost affordable for the company. Then, allow workers to buy their own health care insurance policies (based on their own needs) and pay for them through payroll deduction with pre-tax earnings. There are numerous insurance employers that sell individual plans on this basis. Everybody wins. Workers can tailor their coverage to their own needs and circumstances using their own doctors. Companies win by stopping the endless cycle of rising costs and ever-changing plans. And when people become responsible for the cost of their own insurance, they become more attentive to their own health. Besides, if an employee is interested in working for you ONLY because your company offers great insurance benefits aren’t they telling you they’re going to cost you more money in the future?

Establish a “Wellness Culture”

Our current “sickness culture” perpetuates the medical care crisis and hastens the demise of market-based solutions. By sickness culture, I mean our focus on health problems instead of on having a healthy workplace and performance culture.

So, what would a “wellness culture” look like? First, instead of paid sick days, workers might be rewarded at year’s end with an attendance bonus. Workers would be reimbursed for efficacious completion of smoking cessation and weight-loss programs. Companies would invest in corporate memberships at local health clubs so every employee can take part. Workers would be provided in-house wellness programs on a variety of problems ranging from ergonomics to stress management. Finally, employers would commit to hiring and retaining healthy workers. Simply put, healthy workers cost less and are more productive than unhealthy ones. Applicants ought to be screened for health habits and practices that limit their productivity and improve the likelihood of future expense. While this may seem harsh, it rewards those workers whose personal lifestyle and habits be sure the best Return on Investment by the company committing to hire, train and pay them.

Be open to “alternative and complementary” approaches

Studies published in primary medical care journals reveal that people who use “alternative and complementary” health modalities (including chiropractic, acupuncture, yoga and massage) are generally healthier, better educated, take fewer medications and miss fewer days from work than the average American. Since these people look for ways to stay healthy without drugs and surgery, they end up being a net benefit in terms of attendance and productivity. Old prejudices in this area ought to be discarded in order for employers to better productivity and improve profitability

Conclusion

Health Care costs are growing at a staggering pace. Managed care is an abysmal failure. Companies are buckling under the pressure of offering health coverage to their workers. American competitiveness in the market is sagging. These times call for extraordinary solutions. It’s time for American employers to consider some out-of-the-box solutions to the medical care crisis. Business wellness is an approach that is timely, achievable and reasonable given the alternatives. All options ought to be considered while we still have a chance.

The Partnership for Prevention was formed to bolster Fortune 1000 employers to consider making workforce health a CEO concern and adopt strategies to encourage prevention and wellness. Following several years of double-digit rate increases for health care insurance, employers are realizing that one of the best ways to slow the cost increases is to have workers take more responsibility for both costs and health choices. A majority of employers surveyed feel that the best way for reducing costs is monetary incentives/rewards to bolster workers to adopt healthier lifestyles.

Nearly 100% of employers surveyed say that health costs will be a essential or valuable concern over the next five years, according to a survey by United Benefit Advisors. More employers are adopting higher deductible medical plans with HRA’s or HSA’S, wellness programs, and expanded disease management programs in order to control ever-growing medical care costs.

Failure to deal with these problems could be disastrous for a company. Wayne Sensor, Chief Executive Officer of Alegent Health recently stated, “I think that we have built a medical care machinery we can’t afford. I think we are choking the economic engine of America.” In his October 2005 newsletter, Dr. Andrew Weil stated, “I think rising health- care costs are becoming the big economic concern in our nation”. Obesity costs California employers billions of dollars each year. Projected costs for 2005 may reach 28 billion dollars for direct and indirect medical care costs, worker’s compensation, and lost productivity. California has experienced one of the fastest growing rates of obesity of any state.

According to California Health and Human Services Secretary Kim Belshe, “The obesity epidemic is more than a public health crisis, it is an economic crisis.” What is frightening is that most people do not even realize that they are obese, which is defined as only 20% above normal weight. There is a great need for additional education on weight and resulting diseases, and the workplace is an ideal venue. Wellness education and programs can result in a valuable return on investment and, if structured properly, can produce results in a very short period of time.

Although countless employers have attempted some form of wellness program in the past, results from those efforts have been disappointing. In many cases, the healthier workers participated for incentives/rewards, such as fitness center memberships, but those who required it most did not take advantage of the program in a meaningful way. Companies are looking at ways to bolster more workers to buy into the wellness movement.

A current webinar hosted by Human Resource Executive Magazine and presented by Carlson Marketing Group titled, “Healthier workers; Healthier Bottom Line: Engaging workers is the Missing Link in Managing Healthcare Costs,” drove this point home. This session provided actionable advice on how employers are achieving higher impact with their wellness investments by focusing on employee program engagement. It also highlighted how you can set up an Economic Engagement Model to forecast the potential impact for your company.

Employers can not overlook the concern of their employee’s unhealthy lifestyles and must take action to engage them in a meaningful wellness program to decrease health costs, absenteeism and lost productivity. workers also benefit as they derive better health and greater satisfaction in both their personal and professional lives. The alternative is being caught in a non-competitive position and severely impacting the bottom-line of the company.