Workplace Wellness Programs Statistics

Corporate wellness seems to be one of those subjects that is often talked about, but rarely executed. In today’s “hyper-productive” society, we get so caught up with our work, that we lose focus in keeping our body, mind, and heart healthy.Wellness isn’t just about having a healthy body, it entails having a sound mind that will allow you to execute tasks to the best of your abilities.Is your company getting corporate wellness right?Well, look at some of these statistics and start seeing how you (and your company) can improve on. Add this infographic to your site by copying this code: This infographic was crafted with love by Officevibe, the employee survey software that helps companies improve their corporate wellness, and have a better organizational culture. Add this infographic to your site by copying this code: This infographic was crafted with love by Officevibe, the employee survey software that helps companies improve their corporate wellness, and have a better organizational culture. Medical CostsMedical costs fall by about $3.27 for every dollar spent on wellness programs.Basically, the more you invest into employee wellness programs, it will help with medical expenses for both the employee and the company as a whole. You know what they say, a dollar saved is more valuable than a dollar earned.So consider investing time in wellness initiatives as it’ll help with the the betterment of your employees’ finances, in terms of health care. Less Sick Leave28% reduced sick leave, and 26% reduction in medical costs for workplace wellness programs.That’s right, the healthier people are, the less sick they’ll be.

1. Corporate Wellness Program Statistics
2. Employee Health And Wellness Statistics

It doesn’t take a world renowned scientist to figure that one out.Something like an unlimited vacation policy will not only boost spirits, but make employees more productive.If I may go on a bit of a relevant tangent, the only reason that people would want to vacation is because they work too damn hard; just recently, the 2nd richest person on earth said that, will make work more manageable for companies, employees, and create a better work-life balance.So consider being a catalyst and instituting shorter workweeks, as it’ll give you happier and productive employees. By clicking, you consent to receive culture andengagement communications from Officevibe.

Move Around80% of Americans work in jobs that require little or no physical activity.We have previously mentioned different methods of moving around while doing work.Attempting to use stand up desks will increase blood-flow throughout your body. Having will give you a bit of a health boost, while at the same time, allow you to come up with even more creative ideas.Whatever you do, get up and move around. It’s one thing to live a sedentary lifestyle, but when you’re mixing it with bad eating habits, stress, and spending copious amounts of time in front of a computer, it will not have good end-results.So go for a walk, eat better, do whatever it takes to create a better you.

Bad Health Is Costing The Nation Trillions$1.8 trillion is the annual impact of poor health, according to The U.S. Department of LaborWhether it’s days missed, healthcare costs, or even just lack of productivity, poor health is costing the nation trillions of dollars. It doesn’t help out with our current national debt but that’s a whole ‘nother issue.If we collectively begin to improve our health habits and do better, we can improve our nation (and the world), no BS. So while doubters may be against some of the new healthcare laws, it will definitely benefit a company’s growth and production in the long run. Too Much Treatment, Not Enough PreventionFor every $1 spent on healthcare, $0.95 is spent on treatment and only $0.05 is spent on prevention.You know that movie Minority Report?

Tom Cruise is basically able to stop crime before it happens. Wouldn’t it be nice if your company can prevent you from getting sick, or mentally unstable, before it happens?It’s not something out of a science fiction film, you can easily just prevent people from getting sick by taking care of them and accommodating to their needs. It can be something as simple as providing healthy eating options, more free/down time, or just giving them freedom to do things.Instead of spending so much money to make employees better, you can just treat them better and there will be no need to spend that much on treatment. The Amount Of Stress At Work Is TOO DAMN HIGH78% of Americans describe their jobs as stressful.is such a problem, that the CDC has a whole department studying its effects. Not to mention that it is developing a lot of mental health issues.Personally, I have a genetic predisposition to anxiety problems, so I have to take care of this by creating a low-stress environment. I recommend that you do things that will make your job less stressful.

Talk to your management about it, if they’re open-minded enough they’ll provide you with help that you’ll need.If some of your problems are too harsh, I would recommend seeking help,. As selfish as it may sound, it’s your life, and you shouldn’t be stressed because of work. Smoking Is Causing A Lot Of Problems$75.5 billion per year in healthcare costs from smokers in the U.S.Having dated two women that have smoked cigarettes in my lifetime, I can almost assure all my peers that this statistics is absolutely true. They always had to visit the doctor, whether it was respiratory problems, weakness, nauseousness, or immune system problems.Bottomline, smoking is bad.

The majority of people who smoke know it’s a bad habit and it does damage to the body. This might be a little bit to progressive, but I think that companies should offer treatment programs for smokers to quit.I think this “perk” isn’t that bad and it will help a lot of people in the long run. At the end of the day, it’s up to the person, but they should know that it’s affecting them, and their health.If Facebook and Apple can, I’m sure you can sneak in a plan for smoking treatment. Smokers Cause Billions Of Dollars In Lost Productivity2X more lost productivity per week from smokers, costing an estimated $27 billion.You can blame this on smoke breaks, health complications, or whatever reason you want, but smokers are less productive.The example that I look at, is a company like Rackspace, who started doing their best to get all. As soon as they started the programs they were more productive and weren’t dependent on smoking.

Corporate Wellness Programs Lower Absenteeism19% reduction in absenteeism, and a savings of $264 per employee, per year for on-site employee wellness programs.The healthier the employees, the more they’ll be at work. If you have a healthy body, you’ll have a healthy mind, so do your best to stay healthy and also, be mindful.So follow some of the steps that we have provided in order to create happier, healthier, and more productive employees. It’ll keep them around a lot longer, and it will diminish any high stress levels within your office.

Less Sick Days For Those In Wellness Programs70% fewer sick days for employees participating in wellness programs than those opting out.This goes hand-in-hand with our previous statistic. When employees are participating in wellness programs, they’re less prone to getting sick and more likely to show up the work.Unless you’re like some of us here at the Officevibe office that choose to lift a ridiculous amount of weight, and become so sore that you can’t walk the next day, you’ll be fine.So start working healthier and try a that best suits your office.

Your Thoughts On Corporate Wellness Initiatives?Do you think they improve employee performance? Let us know your thoughts on twitter.

Mountains of Workplace Wellness Statistics Show the Benefits of WellnessThink of the different benefits employers typically offer. These could include a retirement or pension plan, healthcare, paid time off, or maternity leave. These are designed to help your organization recruit and maintain qualified employees. Yet there are no studies or statistics that show that offering these benefits has any measurable effect on it worksite’s ability to recruit or maintain workers. We do them because we believe they are important.These things are actually very hard to study and we have a feeling or sense that they do make a difference in our ability to attract good workers. But, there is no science to back any of this up.Now consider your wellness program.

Unlike all the other benefits your worksite offers, wellness programs have been studied for decades. There are hundreds and hundreds of rigorous scientific evaluations of the impact of wellness programs. We are blessed to have mountains of workplace wellness statistics. There is more research on the impact of wellness programs than anything else your company does. Granted, the research is not perfect—no research ever is.But after decades of scientists evaluating programs, we have an enormous amount of very solid statistical evidence that show the benefits of having a wellness program. I personally have published on the impact of worksite wellness programs. And I am just one of hundreds of scientists in the field.These studies are what I use to create this list of workplace wellness statistics every employer should know.

5 Proven Workplace Wellness Statistics Every Employer Should Know 1) Wellness Programs Improve Employee Health BehaviorsThe is behavior change. With the right education, skills, motivation, skills/tools, and social support, people change behaviors. Wellness programs are good at helping people adopt and maintain healthy behaviors. This is perhaps the biggest benefit of having a wellness program.Healthy behaviors lead to lower health risks, and lower health risks lead to less chronic disease. With less chronic disease employees have fewer health care costs.

It looks like this. Source:Just about anybody can have healthy behaviors for a few days or weeks. The key is to maintain healthy behaviors for years. As soon as you stop having healthy behaviors you stop getting the benefits.I like workplace wellness statistics that go out for two years because the results are pretty conclusive by that time. If you can get your employees to participate in a good wellness program chances are they will adopt and maintain healthy behaviors for years to come.Most wellness studies show the employees have better health behaviors. They eat healthier foods, they eat smaller portions, they exercise more often, they smoke less, they don’t drink in excess, they wear seat belts more often, and they’re pretty good at controlling their stress.Wellness programs can also help alleviate depression and the symptoms of depression as well as improve life satisfaction.Even the American Heart Association has completed an of the ability of wellness programs to improve health and reduce cardiovascular risk.have evaluated all of the research and reported that wellness programs, do in fact, have the ability to improve employee health.

In 2013 researchers completed one of the most rigorous and comprehensive reviews of wellness programs. This study is called the. Here is what the authors concluded:We find that workplace wellness programs can help contain the current epidemic of lifestyle-related diseases, the main driver of premature morbidity and mortality as well as health care cost in the United States.Soeren Mattke, Lead Author of the 2) Wellness Programs Reduce Elevated Health RisksThe foundation of any good wellness program must be focused on helping employees adopt healthy behaviors. Elevated blood glucose, high blood cholesterol, and high blood pressure are almost all caused by unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity.Eating and exercising are behaviors.

A few years ago I published the results of a randomized clinical trial that helped people improve their nutrition and physical activity.Our workplace wellness statistics showed that health risks could improve dramatically. Those who maintain healthy behaviors experience lower health risks for six weeks, after this program began. Source:Reductions in elevated health risks are important. The reported that for every 1% drop in total cholesterol, the risk of having a heart attack dropped by 2 to 3%. For every one point drop in elevated diastolic blood pressure, there is another 2 to 3% drop in heart disease risk.Low health risks are the foundation of good health, and wellness programs are a great way to help employees and their spouses avoid elevated health risks.

There are hundreds of research papers that evaluated the ability of wellness programs to reduce elevated health risks.looking at almost 200,000 wellness participants and showed that 5 of 7 health risks improved after one year.at all of the published studies to get a consensus. This review showed that comprehensive wellness programs will have a significant impact on elevated health risks. A Weakness of Wellness ProgramsThere is one weakness that almost all wellness programs have. After 30 years of evaluating dozens and dozens of programs it has become clear that it is difficult to impossible to get large groups of employees to reach and maintain a healthy body weight.

The obesity epidemic is caused by a variety of cultural factors and helping employees lose weight has proven to be exceptionally difficult.While the workplace wellness statistics suggest that helping people improve blood cholesterol, blood pressure, and blood glucose is possible, helping people lose weight and keep the weight off has proven to be hard to do. I’m the first one to admit that worksite wellness programs are not very effective at helping people lose weight.Just take a look at the body mass index (BMI)data in the table above.

Those who are obese do lose some weight after a few years but not very much.There is some hope. Recently, the showed some promising results. Source:If the focus of your wellness program is to help individuals reach and maintain a healthy body weight you should prepare yourself to be disappointed. The unhealthy culture that surrounds most of us makes it extremely difficult to lose weight, in fact, most people in the United States and in the industrialized world gain weight every year.So there’s a couple ways to look at this. Wellness programs are very effective at reducing elevated health risks like blood pressure, glucose, and cholesterol. But they are not very effective at helping people lose weight.Without the impact of all the wellness programs in the world, obesity would be even worse than it currently is.

Wellness programs may not help your employees reach a healthy body weight but it looks like they are helping your employees to stop gaining weight. 3) Wellness Programs Reduce Health Care CostsThere are almost 100 different studies that have looked at the financial impact of wellness programs. I have published six of these myself, and I have years of experience conducting some extremely complicated ROI studies.

These studies are not easy to do and they take years to complete.In 2001 I published the most comprehensive review ever completed on the.That study alone are reviewed 100 different research papers. The ability of a wellness program to reduce healthcare costs depends upon how effective the program really is. Having an occasional lunch and learn about nutrition or just doing a biometric screening will not be enough to move the healthcare cost needle.Comprehensive worksite wellness programs that improve employee behaviors will see a bending of the healthcare cost trend. Most often they will discover that the savings from program participation will be greater than the actual cost of the program.

Corporate Wellness Program Statistics

Almost everyone of these return on investment (ROI) studies show a positive return on investment. Researchers from Harvard recently published another summary of the wellness ROI research.Here is what they found: Study FocusNumber of StudiesAverage Study LengthAverage ROIHealth Care Costs223 years3.27Source:Among the 22 different studies that looked at wellness programs and healthcare costs, the average return on investment was 3.27. This means that for every dollar that was spent on the program the company saved $3.27 because of reduced healthcare costs.Last year researchers evaluated the impact of the WellSteps wellness program at a large school district. Here is the actual healthcare cost trend for this worksite.After four years of wellness this worksite is actually spending less on healthcare costs than it did before the program began. For every dollar they spent on wellness they saved $3.3. The ROI of Wellness 4) Wellness Programs Improve ProductivityPoor employee productivity can be defined as physically being at work but not working.

Employee Health And Wellness Statistics

This type of poor productivity is called presenteeism. It is estimated that the cost associated with presenteeism due to poor employee health is at least.While the estimated cost of presenteeism dwarfs the cost of health care, it does not receive the same level of scrutiny among employers preoccupied with controlling the direct costs of poor employee health. There are a lot of reasons why employees have low productivity.

They may not know how to use the equipment, they may be distracted by other employees, they may not know what they are doing, they may be tired, or they might be on Facebook. One of the main causes of presenteeism is poor health.New workplace wellness statistics have been revealed in published by the journal Population Health Management.Smokers were 28% more likely to have high presenteeism than non-smokers. Employees with an unhealthy diet were 66% more likely to have high presenteeism than those who regularly ate whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.Employees who didn’t exercise very much were 50% more likely to have high presenteeism than employees who were regular exercisers.

These findings demonstrate that poor health behaviors are strongly associated with high levels of presenteeism.In short, unhealthy individual lifestyle choices may result in substantially higher levels of lost productive work time.This figure displays increased rates of high presenteeism among employees who smoke, don’t eat healthy, or don’t exercise regularly. Poor health behaviors eventually lead to elevated health risks and chronic diseases. The figure below shows how health risks such as excess body weight, elevated blood pressure, and high cholesterol increased the odds of having high presenteeism.The other health conditions in this figure further paint the presenteeism picture—the presence of risk factors, pain, and chronic disease, especially chronic depression, dramatically increase the odds of having high presenteeism.Looking at this graph, you can see that employees who suffer from neck/back pain are 79% more likely to have high presenteeism than employees who do not have neck/back pain. These results confirm several ideas about the benefits of wellness. Presenteeism is associated with poor health behaviors as well as elevated health risks and the presence of chronic disease.Wellness programs that focus on helping employees have good health behaviors will eventually have an impact on productivity.

I have written extensively about the connections between worksite wellness and productivity in a 5) Wellness Programs Can Decrease AbsenteeismThere are over 50 papers that have looked at the connections between worksite wellness programs and reduced absenteeism. Worksites with comprehensive wellness programs can experience reduced absenteeism for a variety of reasons:. Employees with good health behaviors have lower absenteeism.

Employees who can control their stress have lower absenteeism. Employees with healthy blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose have lower absenteeism. Employees who are not overweight or obese have lower absenteeismI summarized all of these studies in one that was published a few years ago. You can read the nitty-gritty details of all 46 papers if you ‘re really curious.Any wellness program that can reduce absenteeism will experience cost savings. Harvard researchers looked at the ROI of wellness programs as they relate absenteeism and demonstrated that for every dollar wellness programs spend on wellness they can save $2.73 and reduce absenteeism. Study FocusNumber of StudiesAverage Study LengthAverage ROIAbsenteeism222 years2.73Source:Wellness programs have the ability to improve employee health and this can have an impact on whether or not individuals are absent from work. So What?The sheer volume of workplace wellness statistics gives us a good idea of what it takes to produce positive wellness outcomes.

There is more data and statistics on your wellness program than anything else your worksite does.We know the benefits of having a wellness program. The challenge is to create a program that improves employee health and reduces employee-related expenses.