Employee Wellness Programs: worker Health Services and worker Benefits

Small and large organizations carry a significant proportion of the provision of health care for families in this country by providing healthcare insurance for their workers. With the escalating increase in healthcare cost many organizations are attempting to slow the increase of healthcare insurance premiums by providing creative cost control initiatives. Greater emphasis is being put on primary prevention to keep workers healthy and secondary prevention to identify and treat health conditions before they can become serious.

At some workplaces, workers are being encouraged to take greater responsibility for their health related behaviors through risk rated incentive packages. Linking wellness to worker benefits of gain sharing and co-payment cost reductions will provide new opportunities requiring efforts of collaboration between the human resource managers and the Employee Wellness Program specialists. These two sets of experts may also work together for the ongoing evaluation of cost effective Employee Wellness Programs.

In conjunction with the above initiatives most large organizations also have a nurse or physician on staff to dispense on-site medical and preventive care. Some initiatives have also found it cost effective to provide their own physical therapy programming to assist injured and infirm workers in regaining optimal functioning. A broad-based selection of health related worker services and benefits would include the following:

• Free or low cost health screenings provided on site by company clinical personnel or through outside contractors:
Serum cholesterol
Colorectal cancer screening
Blood pressure check
Mammography
Vision and hearing screening
Diabetes
• Referral and follow-up procedures (e.g., Hypertension, Cholesterol, Cancer)
• First Aid and emergency care
• Disease control and prevention initiatives
• Child and infirm adult care services
• Pre-retirement and financial planning
• Ongoing learning/educational opportunities
• Coordination of company picnics and outings
• Parent-child work visitation initiatives
• Workers compensation/rehabilitation