Well, you don’t actually need a more graphic presentation on how health concerns can affect your business. The biggest health crisis of them all today should drive the message home: COVID-19. As the virus pummeled America in the early months of 2020, businesses, from restaurants to airlines to retail stores, shuttered as if directed by one big conductor in an opera. It didn’t take long before millions of Americans filed for unemployment benefits. To be exact, over 10 million displaced workers did.
Fast forward to today in 2021, and you could be back in business, as many before you have. As energetic as you may be in getting your productivity back up again, don’t forget to put the well-being of your workers into the business equation.
A healthy workforce is your best chance to roaring success. As you may know by now, every time your employee fails to report because of sickness, someone else needs to pick up the work left behind. The sad part is if such an incident becomes a trend, it could stretch your operation thin.
Again the pandemic shows us that the law of the jungle applies here. It’s the survival of the fittest. Ultimately, people who have underlying medical conditions are the ones severely affected by the COVID-19 virus.
Indeed, if there’s one benefit that is a glorious advantage both for your business and for your employee, it’s well-being. Below are some concrete ways promoting well-being in your workforce matters.
Promoting Well-being Boost Worker Behavior
When you introduce well-being programs, you encourage your employees to change for the better. Pushing a healthy lifestyle via education and motivation is a great way to help people achieve astounding success. By doing so, people learn the benefits of healthy behaviors and seek to maintain them. That, in itself, is one big benefit of introducing a well-being program in your workforce.
The overall results are truly amazing. When people lead a healthy lifestyle, they lower their health risks. By lowering their health risks, they also lower their chances of getting chronic diseases.
No less than the American Heart Association confirmed how well-being programs are key in reducing cardiovascular risks in people. On the other end of the spectrum, doing the reverse can be tragic.
A glorious example here is cigarette smoking. Research shows about smoking is directly linked to about 8 % to 90% of lung cancer deaths.
Promoting Well-being Minimizes Health Risks
At its heart, well-being programs aim to help workers adopt a healthy lifestyle. The majority of health risks (e.g., high blood pressure, cholesterol, above-normal blood sugar) are a product of a sedentary lifestyle and unhealthy diets. Adopting an active lifestyle and eating right can help reverse such risks.
Overconsumption of certain foods (e.g., certain meats, beer, dried beans) can also lead to high uric acid levels in your body. If not disposed of well, excess uric in the body can lead to gout, a form of arthritis that leads to sudden joint pains. In the long run, such a health issue can create complications in the workplace.
A wellness mindset can help reverse such faulty eating habits to combat gout. Additionally, uric acid-lowering supplements should come in handy to minimize the effects of excess uric acid in the body. Regular intake of these vitamins can help keep gout flare-ups at bay.
Promoting Well-being Minimizes Health Care Costs
You save tons of dollars when you introduce robust well-being programs in your company. Indeed, there are a host of studies that point out the huge financial savings you get when you do so. Some of these studies take years to complete and go through extremely complicated financial ROI computations.
One comprehensive study in 2001 published in 100 research papers showed how big a financial impact introducing wellness programs in the worksite can be. It also revealed that you just can’t do lip service when it comes to these programs. An occasional biometric screening and passing mentions of healthy diet benefits can’t be enough.
But when you have a robust wellness program, you can bend your healthcare cost to the company’s advantage.
Well-being Programs Spike Productivity
This must be music to any manager’s ears but it’s true. When you have a comprehensive well-being program, you raise the notch of your productivity levels higher. Poor productivity is an employee who is present but not achieving quality work. In short, he’s not 100% effective on the job.
A good term for that is presenteeism: present but not producing quality work. You can cite a lot of reasons why a worker is unproductive. He may be new or is distracted. However, take note that poor health almost always means a less productive worker.
A study revealed smokers are 28% more likely to display presenteeism behavior at work compared to non-smokers. Workers who fail to exercise are 5 % prone to presenteeism.
Therefore, keeping a robust well-being program serves to your advantage in this regard. Your workers stay healthy as your production gears up. It’s a win-win scenario that benefits everyone.