Vital Signs - Employer Healthcare Insights

Whether you are genuinely concerned about your employees' health and wellness or you want to stay competitive during the lowest unemployment rate in years, simply offering a healthcare plan may no longer be enough. Here are a few reasons why.

Every year, employer sponsored healthcare costs are rising with no signs of slowing in the future. Therefore, it's vital to learn how to control what you can when it comes to the cost of your employees' healthcare. So, how do you get control of your company's healthcare costs? 

1. Establish a culture of health and wellness 

2. Offer telehealth and virtual visit services 

3. Take control of prescription costs

4. Implement an onsite clinic 

Having an onsite clinic vs. using traditional health insurance plans can impact your health costs in many ways. Not only are there savings to be discovered, but you will also have a clearer understanding of where funds are going and more control over how those funds are allocated. 

If you are an HR professional striving to improve the health of your workplace and build a culture of wellness, there are many things you can do to actively promote healthy options and help employees make better choices.

Some companies take on employee health and wellness initiatives in one gigantic sweep, but many ease into it slowly, implementing piece by piece and figuring out what works as they go along. If you don't have the budget or resources to implement everything at once, here are six easy things you can do to jump start your employee health and wellness.

Building a strategic employee health and wellness plan from the ground-up is a big undertaking that can have huge benefits if done right. When it comes to putting your plan down in writing, there is a lot of thought, research, and pre-planning that goes into what to include.

Company culture can be the difference between employees loving to show up to their jobs vs. dreading coming into work every day. Your culture can affect your employees' health, but did you know that employee health can also have a direct impact on your culture? It's important for businesses to understand the relationship between employee health and company culture in order to encourage positive outcomes for each. Let's take a closer look at four ways employee health impacts company culture.

Whether your company is evaluating potential wellness program options or already has a program in place, it's vital to measure and track your employee's health and wellness.  There are many factors to consider when it comes to employee wellness, and it can be somewhat difficult to connect any one behavior to a specific outcome. But it can be helpful to approach it from different angles by measuring multiple items. What should you be looking at then? We've provided 5 ways to measure employee health and wellness.

Providing benefits to employees can be costly, especially when it comes to healthcare. But, not providing benefits can lead to high turnover rates and make it difficult to recruit talented employees. Benefits are also a way to show your employees you care about their personal wellness and needs. If you find you are spending too much on benefits but you know you can't cut anything out, here are some strategies to cut costs without cutting benefits.

Whether you provide wellness options like a fitness center or healthy food or you provide onsite medical or mental health care, you will realize cost savings in your workplace health program as your employees take advantage of the offerings and their health improves. Investing in your employees health and wellness will allow you to realize some pretty major cost savings in the long run. Not convinced? Here are a few ways healthy employees cost your company less.