June 5, 2019

The Benefits of a Corporate Wellness Program

Corporate Wellness packages at Float Lab Perth
The human body is the best picture of the human soul. - Tony Robbins

Corporate Wellness

 

Corporate wellness programs are the activity or policies used to help employees gain awareness of their choices and learn the wisdom of making healthy choices.

This blog explores the value of a wellness programs for organisations and how it can improve health, happiness and reduce your business cost.

At times, we all let our workplace commitments impact on our health; therefore, developing an employee wellness program can be an effective way to remind employees of the importance in being healthy, and for businesses to reduce their direct and indirect costs associated with workplace health. Hopefully you will also see that a well-designed wellness program produces a much happier, healthier workforce.

Ultimately, these factors will add up to greater levels of energy, creativity and productivity that can generate additional business revenues. Many leaders and experts understand this, however too often they don’t have the time or know how to start a corporate wellness program. This is a program that will not only show on the faces of your employees, but on your company bottom line as well. If this interests you, Float Lab can help.

 

Why have a Corporate Wellness Program?

Corporate wellness is an investment in the physical and mental health of employees by creating a healthier, happier and more relaxed environment. Furthermore, a wellness program can improve productivity, while reducing stress levels in the workplace.

Stress is one of the leading causes of illness causing fatigue and burnout. Wellness programs can save companies money by encouraging healthier lifestyles, and this creates healthier employees who will work more diligently and take fewer sick days.

Having a wellness program provides benefits for both the organisation and the employee, thus companies should include employee wellness in the way they do business.

 

Benefits Of Having a Wellness Program

There are numerous health benefits of having a wellness program; and I’ll explore some of the more important one:

    • Improves employee health behaviours
    • Reduces elevated health risks
    • Reduces workplace health costs
    • Improves productivity
    • Decreases absenteeism
    • Improves human resource management
    • May become a future legal requirement
    • Builds and helps sustain employee morale

Improves Employee Health Behaviours

Wellness programs help people adopt and maintain healthy behaviours. This is perhaps the biggest benefit of having a wellness program. Importantly, healthy behaviours lead to lower health risks, and lower health risks lead to less chronic disease; including obesity, and depression.  For business this translates into fewer health cost to the organisation.

Many studies have evaluated the ability of wellness programs to improve health behaviours. Float Lab’s wellness programs are uniquely based on floatation therapy, combined with complementary services and treatments such as Massage and Infrared Sauna. The benefits of floatation therapy are scientifically proven and multi faceted  providing maintenance and healing for mind, body and soul. Providing wellness solutions for the modern workforce is a key focus of our work at Float Lab.

It’s easy to start a fitness or wellness program and fall off the wagon within a week or two,  we have all done it. The key is consistency, to maintain healthy behaviours over a medium to long term. Adopting good habits making them part of your routine and understanding why it is essential to good overall health and wellness. The minute you are “too busy” to make that appointment or gym class the effort to get back into routine can be hard. The momentum is lost and so too are the benefits.  At Float Lab you can consider us your personal wellness trainers. We will help track your progress, offer you advice, best techniques. We are great listeners as post float debriefs can often open new trains of thought and fresh idea’s. We will also make sure your getting to your designated sessions to maximise the benefits and reaping the rewards of a fitter healthier you. Additionally Float Lab specialize in Pregnancy Massage and women’s health consultation and treatment though our partners and Affiliated health professionals Life Care. It should be noted that floatation therapy is safe and very beneficial for 2nd and 3rd Trimester Pregnancy.

Most wellness studies support the conclusion that employees have better health behaviours, when participating in a corporate wellness program. They eat healthier foods, they exercise more often, smoke less, drink less, and are better placed to handle stress. Floatation therapy is a great therapy as it has been proven to help alleviate Anxiety, depression and stress as well as improving optimism and creativity.

 

Reduces Elevated Health Risks

The foundation of any good wellness program must be focused on helping employees adopt healthy behaviours. At Float Lab our focus is on long-term corporate wellness programs. We educate and assist clients to understand how floating can become a core part of their health management plan. Float Lab rooms and pods ensure our facilities meet the highest standards required to provide the best float therapy outcomes, this includes float rooms that are environmentally controlled, acoustically designed, sound proof, light proof with medical grade Epsom Salt (Magnesium Sulphate) float solution set to a comfortable 36 degrees skin temperature. When choosing a float centre ensure that these Clinical requirements of floating are met. Without highest level quality controls it is unlikely you will receive the amazing benefits a quality float environment should provide.

Reducing health risk is critical to long term health, float significantly and unequivocally reduces blood pressure and heart rate. Increases Heart – Rate – Variability clear signs of stress reduction.  For every one-point drop in elevated diastolic blood pressure, there is another 2% to 3% drop in heart disease risk. And this is only one of many reasons to include floatation as part of your corporate wellness program.

At Float Lab we believe that any corporate wellness program that is able to lower health risks is a strong foundation for good health. Therefore, corporate wellness programs are a great way to help employees and their spouses avoid elevated health risks.

 

Reduces Workplace Health Costs

Corporate Wellness Program

There are many different studies that have looked at the financial impact of wellness programs. The ability of a wellness program to reduce health costs depends on the effectiveness of the program.

Comprehensive worksite wellness programs that improve employee behaviours, support a change in employee behaviour resulting in health cost reduction. Organisations that support and encourage employee participation in wellness programs, will discover that the savings from these programs will be greater than the actual cost of the program. Recent studies identify that investment in wellness programs is exactly that. It has been identified that for every dollar spent on wellness business enjoys two to three times multiple return, now that’s positive.

Anyone yet to see the value of a quality workplace wellness program should spend a few minutes to view one of the hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific research papers that say otherwise.

 

Improves Productivity

Poor employee productivity can be defined as physically being at work but not working. It is estimated that the cost associated with presenteeism due to poor employee health is at least 2 to 3 times greater than the direct health care cost.

There are a lot of reasons why employees have low productivity; however, poor sleep and generally poor health are some of the main causes. In short, unhealthy lifestyle choices may result in substantially higher levels of lost productive work time. Concerning is that poor health behaviours usually lead to elevated health risks and chronic diseases, which will increase organisation liabilities and reduced productivity.

It is also recognised that pain and chronic disease, especially chronic depression, dramatically increase the odds of having high presenteeism. Floatation therapy can assist to combat depressions, anxiety, pain, and other presenteeism issues.

It is known 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 behaviours; as well as

, elevated health risks and the presence of chronic disease.

Corporate wellness programs that focus on helping employees have good health behaviours are essentially secure the productivity as well as the longevity of their workforce. Float Lab was built on the ethos of providing a service and environment to better the people’s life quality.

 

Decreases Absenteeism

There are many articles that have looked at the connections between corporate wellness programs and reduced absenteeism. Research support wellness programs because:

  1.     Employees with good health behaviours have lower absenteeism
  2.     Employees who can control their stress have lower absenteeism
  3.     Employees with healthy blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose have lower absenteeism.
  4.     Employees who are not overweight or obese have lower absenteeism

Obviously, any program that can reduce absenteeism will result in business cost savings. This is only possible because wellness programs can improve employee health, but there is also another reason why wellness programs can have such a large impact on absenteeism. We have already spoken about employees who participant in wellness programs are significantly less likely to suffer from chronic health issues. Additionally, it is shown that floatation therapy reduces stress, anxiety and pain, which in turn makes for healthier and happier workforce.

 

Can Improve HR

Although, I could not emphatically find scientific journal articles to support the premise that corporate wellness programs will make a significant impact on your ability to recruit and retain employees; I believe that in a competing work-talent pool; having a corporate wellness programs will make your organisation more attractive.

Retention is the ability to retain your workforce. It is expensive to train a new employee, and I feel that a good wellness program can help your employees to remain loyal to your organisation. Your staff are the most important asset in every organisation; and when an employer offers a corporate wellness programs to its employees then the company is saying, “We value you, and we want you to be happy and healthy”.

Ultimately employee know when they are appreciated. They know when they feel welcomed and valued, and that knowledge can go a long way toward convincing employees to stay with you during the good and the bad times. Therefore, it is important that any corporate wellness program is supported by management, both financially and culturally. At Float Lab we recommend creating a Wellness Policy, endorsed by executive management.

 

May Become A Future Requirement

Recently, Mr Darren Kavanagh, WorkSafe Western Australia Commissioner, spoke on the 30 May 2019 at Edith Cowan University, about new safety legislation and the obligations for employers to ensure the mental health of their workers; including stress, anxiety and depression. Floatation therapy helps people who suffer from these chronic health issues, and organisations that establish corporate wellness programs to address these issues now will ensure future protection under the state and commonwealth legislations.

 

Builds and Helps Sustain Employee Morale

A corporate wellness program has positive effects on employees’ health but more importantly they are happier. At Float Lab we’ve helped hundreds of clients and seen the positive effects floatation therapy has on them. Float Lab corporate wellness program transcends the ROI of wellness and moves towards value on investment (VOI) of wellness.

Employee morale is a huge factor in the success or failure of any organisation and a good wellness program helps employees be happy and healthy. When you offer your employees a wellness program you are telling them that you respect them, you trust them, and that you want to help them be successful in life.

I personally believe that this is one of the most powerful reasons to have a wellness program. Your wellness program helps employees achieve their needs, physical, social, and emotional, and helps you maximise productive, retention and happiness.

 

Conclusion

You will find that Float Lab’s corporate wellness program will improve the lives of your employee and help drive the success of your business.

 

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