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Funding Priorities |
FIT TOGETHER NC (Obesity Initiative) - Workplace Wellness
Background
Over the past two decades, alarmingly high growth-rates of obesity in North Carolina and beyond have led to the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, and several types of cancer. Employers and businesses bear a sizable portion of the costs associated with treating these conditions, resulting in significantly increased health care costs and workers compensation premiums, and, of course, a decline in worker productivity.
Recent data shows that health-related problems now cost North Carolina businesses a whopping nearly $5000 per employee, per year. Medical expenses related to obesity alone are costing NC taxpayers more than $2 billion annually. Yet most employers are not fully aware of the ways that employee health impacts business costs, much less the total burden of health-related costs among their employee population.
Objective
A person's diet, physical activity, drug and tobacco use, and means of managing stress can have a profound effect on his or her personal health – and on their work behavior. One of the best places to help North Carolinians change their behaviors is in the workplace itself. The people in our state spend so many of their waking hours on the job that achieving healthy eating habits and reaching physical activity goals can seem virtually impossible without addressing those issues at work.
The basic idea of workplace wellness is to prevent disease by encouraging employees to adopt habits that will contribute to a healthier lifestyle – and a healthier individual. The first step in creating a healthier workplace is to provide employees with the tools necessary to make positive lifestyle changes. Providing Health Risk Assessments (or HRAs, like the one on www.FitTogetherNC.org) and health screenings by a local physician, nutrition education, stressing smoking cessation and sports & recreation programs are just a few ways to better employee health.
Program
As detailed above, preventing obesity and maintaining good health rank among the most critical issues in North Carolina today. That's why the NC Health and Wellness Trust Fund joined with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of NC to launch Fit Together – a statewide campaign designed to raise awareness about the dangers of being overweight. More importantly, Fit Together seeks to equip individuals, families, communities and businesses with the tools they need to address this pressing health concern.
By providing wellness programs, employers can help employees to understand their current health status and how to reduce health risks. Workplace wellness programs provide access, opportunity and the encouragement workers need to actively participate in improving their own health. The most important benefit is healthier, happier lives for workers, who become more productive employees as a result of feeling better physically.
In fall 2006, Fit Together launched a statewide television advertising campaign promoting the importance of workplace wellness. The campaign highlighted Fit Together's new content-rich Web site containing: workplace wellness 'best practices' from companies large and small across North Carolina; a 'workplace health gauge' to help companies evaluate their efforts to date and learn how to improve upon them; detailed steps on how to effectively and inexpensively incorporate wellness into their business environment; and tips on how employees can contribute to their office's workplace wellness, and more.
Local examples
While obviously not every business can offer a multi-million dollar gym with stair-climbers or a nutritionally balanced free lunch, most can offer workers healthy options in vending machines, access to walking routes, or time for physical activity breaks. Following are a few examples of success stories in North Carolina:
- Blue Ridge Paper, headquartered in Canton, began its workplace wellness program in 2001. It includes health and preventive screenings, smoking cessation, weight reduction, and other programs. Their new on site health clinic is estimated to have saved the company more than $500,000 in its first year alone.
- Replacements Ltd. in Greensboro started a wellness program in 2004 with a budget of only $12,000. As a result, management reports two consecutive years of reductions in workers compensation costs, as well as fewer employee hospitalizations, and decreased absenteeism.
- The City of Elizabeth City gets results by encouraging its employees to get and stay fit by holding an annual Walkathon Challenge, where walking 100 miles in 100 days is promoted.
Cost / Benefit
Business leaders are taught to emphasize the ‘bottom line’. Studies have shown that for every dollar invested by employers in worksite health promotion and wellness programs, savings ranged from $1.49 to $4.91, with a median savings of $3.14. In business terms, that's a greater than 3 to 1 return on investment – a number which is hard to ignore, and a best practice which should warrant serious consideration from companies across the state.
As more employers jump on the wellness bandwagon, health care providers and insurers are beginning to embrace the power of prevention and its ability to lower costs, improve outcomes and help relieve an over-burdened health care system. Wellness programs have been shown to: reduce absenteeism, increase morale and productivity, decrease employee turnover; reduce on-the-job injuries and worker's compensation expenses; and most importantly, they have been shown to cut health care costs.
There is growing evidence that corporate investment in human and health capital is a sound strategy closely linked to business success. Most corporate leaders agree that their workforce is the single most important asset any company has, and that sometimes a business needs to spend money to save money – there is no better example than this.
