Over the last several years, the United States has experienced the emergence of countless lifestyle based illnesses. We have seen an increase of inactivity, poor nutrition, an increase of tobacco use, and more frequent alcohol consumption; Americans are living unhealthy lifestyles that are surely factors contributing to the pervasiveness of chronic diseases. Chronic diseases use to be seen as problems that older generations faced, but over the past several years the United States’ working age group has become a main target. For example, Americans are experiencing higher rates of diabetes, and heart disease. Conditions like these only lead to a diminished quality of life, could possibly lead to shorter life spans, disability, and quite possibly in the long run increased health care costs. Businesses are also impacted by an employees lifestyle decisions; absenteeism and presenteeism.
Employee wellness programs, also known as a “worksite wellness program”, are programs that are designed to promote and support the health, safety, and well being of a company’s employees. Wellness programs are meant to improve the health of the staff, their morale, and in turn also help improve their productivity. There are many components that make up employee wellness programs, for example; Health Screenings, Health Fairs, Fitness classes, Smoking cessation classes, and even wellness issue workshops. Employers have begun adopting these programs in hopes of helping their employees while they are at an age when health interventions can still help transform their long-term health choice. This paper will focus on trends found between employee weight and productivity, and the impacts these could have on a business overall.
It would be safe to say that Ame...
... middle of paper ...
...ter for obese individuals than for average weight individuals. The healthier workers are, the fewer medical services they use. The five leading causes of death in the U.S., heart disease, cancer, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and diabetes — are directly linked to unhealthy lifestyles. Clearly, encouraging healthful habits presents an opportunity to improve workers’ well being, reduce the need for medical services and help control costs.
We need to acknowledge that our methods to control overweight and obesity may commence, but must not conclude with individual accountability. Only a number of diseases require a general approach, other than the effort to hold and decrease the levels of overweight and obesity, and in few places are the stakes higher. Employers seem to have accepted this and are attempting to develop programs to address it.
68995994
America’s obesity epidemic is a hot topic these days. Many people, experts or not, offer an opinion on the best solution to our nation’s weight gain, two of them being Michael Pollan and Michael Moss. Pollan and Moss present different opinions on the subject and offer solutions to the issue. Although Pollan’s article has good points, Moss’s article does a much better job of discussing obesity and providing a viable solution.
This is an essay written in the MIT Sloan Management Review that presents the correlation between businesses and the issue of obesity in order to persuade businesses to take action in regards to preventing the issue. Therefore, its target audience is anyone who currently works in business or plans to do so in the future. In this review, the author begins by citing four internal and external reasons for which businesses should care about obesity: self-preservation, public criticism, employee productivity, and opportunity. The author proceeds by providing an idea as to how businesses can assist in reversing the trend. In order to do so, he analyzes what he considers to be the two sides of the obesity problem: physical activity and food consumption.
As a large sedentary community, the Mid Atlantic Consolidated Patient Accounts Center (MACPAC) has a great need to promote exercise and healthy eating habits in the workplace. Currently more than one-third of the country suffers from obesity. It is my hope that with the help of the Wellness Committee we can continue to improve healthy lifestyle changes, and curb the epidemic of obesity that our country has. I am currently finishing my Masters in Public Health, and need to do a service project for the community. It is my hope that the MACPAC will be a place where we can start this change from sedentary lifestyles, to a more healthy and active
The people in the workplace can be categorized into two groups: the employer and the employees. The employees work for their employer and in turn, the employer has the duty and responsibility to ensure that the minimum safety requirements are met. However, employers are not required to provide health insurance benefits to their employees. More often than not, providing health insurance benefits is very costly to the employer and in an attempt to mitigate the costs, employers’ encourage employee participation in various healthy lifestyle programs and initiatives as well as providing incentives for their participation in such programs. These kinds of actions are not always met with enthusiasm, some find it unreasonable to be expected to do so on their own time to change their lifestyle to suit their employers.
One health concern in this video series is shown with Darryl Phillipson. He is a judge, and he mentions in part 2 of the series that it is even difficult for him to walk up the stairs to get to the podium. He is said to be suffering from knee pain, high blood pressure, and he is on medication to control his obesity. Because Phillipson is at a higher risk for cardiac failure, or any other major heart disease, he is using the option of Bariatric surgery to lose weight and improve his weight-related health conditions. Another individual that was interviewed because of health related concerns was Wayne Robinson, a field superintendent for Nabholz Construction Corporation in part 3 of the video series. Robinson dropped weight from being around 245 pounds, and decreased his cholesterol levels. He says in part 3 of the video series, “Talking to Jamie (member of health dept.) made me realize I needed to start exercising, and the weight started falling off. I was stoked.” The health department of this corporation started doing research on its employees who work at sites constructing. Robinson had very high cholesterol, which could later lead to heart problems, and other serious illnesses, all related to being over weight. One of these health risks that I feel I could become extremely at risk for is
campaign and technical assistance to promote the benefits of worksite health promotion. A new CDC
There are a substantial number of policies in place in hopes to reduce obesity rates as well as encourage active living. However, there seems to be a large gap between why the policies are implemented in hopes to achieve a set outcome, and the knowledge of appropriate and effective steps to go about producing the desired change. Additionally, while there are policies in place with the intent of reducing obesity rates, there are few to none that with the intent of promoting active living within the workplace.
Chronic illness issues can include managing their illness, the cost of taking care of the illness, etc. Many people who suffer from a chronic illness suffer a lot trying to manage their illness on a daily basis. According to a website called NCOA.org, “About 80% of older adults have one chronic disease. 68.4% of Medicare beneficiaries have two or more chronic diseases and 36.4% have four or more. Chronic diseases can affect a person’s ability to perform important activities, restricting their engagement in life and their enjoyment of family and friends”
As the population of the United States ages and lifespan increases, the U.S. is being faced with challenges that could either hurt the country or benefit it if plans are executed correctly. By the year 2050, more than thirty-two million Americans will be over the age eighty and the share of the 80-plus generation will have doubled to 7.4 percent. Health care and aging population has become a great deal considering the impact it is having on the U.S. The United States is heading into another century with an outstanding percentage of people within the aging population. Today’s challenges involving health care and the aging populations are the employees of health professions being a major percentage of the aging population, the drive into debt, and prevention and postponement of disease and disability.
A wellness program will cost to set-up, but will be worthwhile to the company from the amount of output they will receive from the program. In my chart below, it states that employers spend nearly three-quarters of premiums on health insurance. It is clear that healthier employees will lead to lower premiums. With lower premiums comes slower premium growth which will save employers a great deal of money in the long run. The employees’ will also save by avoiding unnecessary care and reducing co-pays. Healthier employees’ effects the health care providers positively as well; it motivates them to provide high-value care. Dr. Tyler Cooper cited Devon Energy out of Oklahoma City as a company that has focused on simple health strategies that are impactful to the employee. Devon Energy tracked the health of its entire workforce and found that more than 85 percent used wellness services within the year. That led to improvement in health in all areas and saved the company more than $2.5 million on their medical premium renewal. (Carlson, 2014) It is obvious that a company cannot be successful without employees who show up every day prepared to give their full attention to their job. Employees that are physically healthy are shown to miss fewer days at work then employees who do not and there are 45 million avoidable sick days every year. Kaiser Permanente, a non-profit health
Omitting nutrition and exercise from the agenda can result in employees with health related illnesses such as obesity, high blood pressure, and Type 2 diabetes. As a result, this could spiral into other serious reverberations such as slowed brain function or even death that comes with a diet high in saturated fats and sugar (AZ Central). For any business in search of revenues, unhealthy employees are undoubtedly detrimental to productivity. For example, look at any business that blossoms off part-time employees, such as McDonald’s. A majority do not offer health benefits comparable to companies that hire primarily full-time employees like Kaiser Permanente. Therefore, a company like McDonald’s budgets little money towards the concern for the nutritional lifestyle of its workers. Consequently, many of these McDonald’s employees are obese or highly susceptible to health related illnesses since the fast-food giant asserts little emphasis on a life of healthy living. Many employees thus consume a higher quantity of McDonald’s food while on the job, contributing to the harmful effects of a high fat and low nutritional diet. Moreover, because most of these fast-food buildings do not provide workers with an area to work out while on break, employees cannot reap the benefits of a midday workout. These include
Scientific evidence shows that people in the USA suffer from at least one chronic disease. To make the matter worse, prognostics shows that diabetes rates can double in 2050 ,(Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
With the health care costs reaching high number there is no wonder we have a large number of absenteeism. So many wait to the last possible painstaking work day to decide to see a doctor about their aliment, and all of that could be prevented. Preventing oneself to have to take time off from work is one way to keep costs low. There are so many areas that need to be addressed when it comes to what is going to slow us down as a company. According to estimates by Dr. Jaime Claudio(1991), a corporate wellness consultant for Health Plus, a provider of health-care insurance, a comprehensive eating awareness and weight- management program designed to improve long-term habits could generate an 80% reduction in the incidence of potential problems caused by obesity in the workplace. These problems include hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and diminished work efficiency. Obesity is not the only eating disorder that is a problem, there is bulimia and anorexia. Smoking, drinking, substance abuse, and stress are problems that are brought into the workplace and stop productivity. We have to be aware of issues that are there but are not usually thought of as an illness.
There are numerous benefits and companywide payoffs for implementing fitness programs. First, the implementation of company-wide health and fitness programs can result in reduced costs of insurance and employee health care cost. Employers are beginning to actively seek candidates that are in better physical shape because they do not have to spend as much on health care fees. With just a limited amount of working out, studies show that a significant positive impact can be made on ...
Weight Loss Challenge: This is pretty direct and to the point. But create a challenge for most weight lost. By the end of the challenge, your employees will be not only healthier because of the weight loss, but they’ll have even more energy to work, as a result.