Keep employees active and productive

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 FOR YEARS, ADVOCATES of workplace wellness programs have promoted them as a way to reduce the cost of health care and employer-financed health insurance. Now, a four-year study of Xerox Corp. workers has found significant reduction in the frequency and seriousness of workplace injuries among those who participate in a wellness program.
     “Those people who are healthier have fewer injuries,” says lead researcher Shirley Musich of the University of Michigan Health Management Research Center.
     The study examined on-the-job injuries among 3,338 workers at a Xerox's Rochester, N.Y., manufacturing complex from 1996 to 1999. The results were published in a recent issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
     The workers studied had been employed full-time by Xerox since 1981 and were members of Blue Choice Health Maintenance Organization. Seventy-two percent were men, and their average age was 55.
    Of the group, 943 participated in 1998 in the company's health risk appraisal program, a key part of its employee wellness plan. 
   
The health risk appraisal evaluated the workers' health risks such as smoking, obesity, drug and alcohol use, high blood pressure, life and job dissatisfaction. It is designed to steer them toward a healthier lifestyle.
    “What companies like Xerox want to know is, does this program have value?” Musich said. “What does the company gain in spending money on employee wellness.”
    The answer, according to the study, is yes, such programs do have value because they save considerably more than they cost.
     Among those who participated in the health risk appraisal, 5.6% made workers compensation claims, compared with 8.9 percent of non-participants
     And when they did get hurt on the job, the health appraisal participants had an average cost per injury of $6,506, compared with $9,482 for non-participants, the study found.
     “Over a two-year period, we found a 5-1 return on investment,” said Deborah Napier, health management director for Xerox and a co-author of the study.
     On-the-job injuries cost $125 billion in the United States, according to a 1999 estimate by the National Safety Council. That includes $62 billion in lost wages and productivity, $19.9 billion in medical costs and $16.7 billion in other employer costs. 
    
Workers compensation insurance cost about $42.4 billion that year, the council said.
     Employers should look closely at the study's findings and seriously consider adding or keeping wellness programs, said Lucia Corral Pena, a program director at the California Wellness Foundation in Woodland Hills, Calif. Wellness programs typically cost 1 percent to 2 percent of a company's health care expenses.
     While medium and small companies will not be able to match Xerox's ability to run an in-house wellness program, she said they can bring in consultants to accomplish the same goal.
     “This shows that there's an economic incentive to do it,” Corral Pena said.
  John Frittenburg, fitness consultant for Health Canada, agrees that encouraging and even enabling employees to keep fit, will result in a healthier workplace..
  Frittenburg deleoped the government website “Active Living at Work”
  “It has a whole range of benefits, some of which are economic,” he says. “Happier, healthier employees are more productive and, for companies that are in recruitment mode, wellness programs are a huge draw.”
 
Helping fitness mesh with work does not have to be expensive, says Mary Murphy, founder of Vancouver's Workplace Wellness Solutions Inc. She says business owners can be creative with the programs they choose to establish.
 One company Murphy with clears the furniture out of the board room once a week and a fitness instructor leads staff through a series of stretching exercises in the dark. “It reduces the mental chatter for them, and it's a tool to bring back to their desks.”WSN