In a nation struggling to get healthier and cope with rising insurance costs, workplace wellness programs offer hope. If only more people would buy into the idea.
Kason Industries in Newnan, for example, offers its workers wellness benefits like discounted gym memberships. But while 90 percent sign up, only about 20 percent actually use the gym.
“People understand (the benefits), but they don’t always act on it,” said Christy Salgado, human resources manager for the refrigeration hardware maker.
Enter the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which under a little-discussed provision of the Affordable Care Act, is tasked with helping employers boost participation in wellness programs.
The Atlanta-based CDC last week sponsored a training program, held over three days at Georgia Tech, called Work@Health. Representatives from 75 companies including Kason studied how to convert their good intentions into results — how to get employees to eat better, stop smoking, exercise more and drink less.
Work@Health’s goal is teaching employers how to sell employees on wellness and get more to participate. The program is for companies trying to start a wellness effort, or improve one. Atlanta is one of four U.S. cities where it is being rolled out this year.
“They know it’s a good thing to do, but they get hung up when they try to implement these programs,” said Jason Lang, team lead for workplace health programs at the CDC. The agency contracted with a Maryland company to do the training.
Wellness has gotten more attention lately because of health reform and because of marketplace pressures as everyone seeks to reign in medical costs. Wellness is considered a way to better manage chronic diseases and keep people who have them out of the hospital.
For employers, effective wellness programs can lead to lower insurance premiums under incentive plans offered by insurers. They can also cut absenteeism and result in fewer workers’ compensation and disability claims, the CDC said, citing multiple studies.
Employees may also save through lower premiums for their share of insurance costs. Workers have more skin in the game now, too. Employees face higher deductibles and co-pays, so staying healthy pays off that way as well.
Most large U.S. corporations have some form of wellness program. A Rand study for the U.S. Department of Labor found about half of American employers with 50 or more workers had a wellness benefit, covering three-quarters of the nation’s workforce. The study determined that wellness programs, “… can help contain the current epidemic of lifestyle-related diseases, the main driver of … health care costs in the United States.”
But smaller firms, which often lack a robust human resources department and a big enough budget to implement wellness programs, do not.
While 93 percent of small businesses said their employees’ health is important to the company’s bottom line, only 22 percent said they offered a wellness program, a survey by the National Small Business Association found.
Work@Health is focused on employers with 500 or fewer workers. Most participants at the Atlanta training session were in that category, and they came from a variety of industries including manufacturing, construction, retailing, wholesale and transportation
The CDC has had a workplace health program since 2007, but it’s been modest in scope. The ACA provided $8 million nationwide for the Work@Health project, which expects to train 500 people in four U.S. cities including Atlanta this year.
Companies that participate in Work@Health can receive up to $5,000 that can be used, for example, to hire a health coach or to convert a meeting room into an exercise space. They also get follow-up visits from trainers through the end of the year to make sure they stay on track.
For all their benefits, wellness programs have met resistance, from both employers and employees. Some companies want to see a quicker return on the time, money and effort they invest. One review of dozens of studies of corporate wellness programs determined that employers saved $6 for every $1 they spent, a little more than half coming from reduced medical costs and the balance from reduced absenteeism.
Returns don’t come immediately, however. And some employees view certain elements like biometric testing as invasive. They also worry about their privacy.
Janey Kravitz, director of work site wellness for the Atlanta practice of Ascension Insurance, a benefits consulting firm, got the Work@Health training and plans to teach it to clients. She likes that the training is tailored for small to midsize employers, is available for companies with little or no budget for wellness program managers, and provides for feedback and follow-up from instructors.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said.
Salgado, the Kason manager who participated, said the company’s next steps will be to brand its wellness program, sell it to workers and come up with ways to measure the payoff. The program, she said, “will provide Kason with tools and resources to fully develop our wellness program to ensure sustainability for the future, which will in turn lead to healthier employees and healthier families.”
