The Benefits of Employee Wellness Plans at the Workplace

In recent years, companies throughout the country have embraced the idea of employee wellness. Clearly, healthier workers become happier and more productive workers, which is a win-win for everybody. Many businesses now offer a variety of incentives for their workers to become healthier.

They can range from discounts on health club memberships to subsidizing a higher amount of the monthly health care premiums to creating on-site workout facilities making them more accessible to the employee. For smaller businesses, building an on-site facility may be beyond what the budget allows. However, there is no reason not to consider offering some of the other incentives, because in the end, they are likely to pay big returns.

Here are just a few of the benefits companies can realize by implementing an employee wellness program:

Improved Employee Morale: Employees who become healthy through the help of workplace wellness programs have a higher morale on the job. When someone is healthy, their self-esteem is higher and their confidence builds. This allows them to perform their job more effectively and with fewer sick days saving the company money and getting more productivity for their labor dollars. As a side note, even employees that do not take advantage of all the incentives tend to have a better morale simply because they know the employer cares about their well-being and is trying to help them live healthier.

A Culture of Wellness: Employee wellness programs have been shown to change the entire culture of the company. Since the workplace is a social environment, when something becomes a trend, many people tend to buy into it. When employees see their co-workers becoming healthier, they are motivated to do the same for themselves. It is also helpful if upper management sets an example by participating in the wellness program alongside their employees. Management setting an example tends to create a culture of people that are focused on bettering themselves and by extension the company as a whole.

Worker Retention: Business owners understand that one of the biggest expenses they have on an ongoing basis is hiring and training new employees. The cost of training an employee to the point where they are able to perform their job effectively can run into the thousands of dollars. For this reason, one of the biggest benefits of a wellness program is the employees feel good about the company they work for, which makes them far less likely to look elsewhere even when they could earn a little more in a different position.