Where to Invest
Keeping the healthy people healthy at work is one of the most important investments an employer can make.
Keep the healthy healthy People spend the majority of waking hours at work, so naturally the worksite is the ideal place for health promotion. But if wellness programs address only high-risk individuals, just a small fraction of employees will benefit. The real opportunity is to keep the healthy people healthy - the 70% to 80% who are more eager to participate in wellness and are already more productive, healthier, and absent less.
High-risk = low return Although programs that zero in on the high-risk population may seem like the best strategy, groundbreaking research from the University of Michigan confirms that the major opportunity for economic impact is keeping low-risk employees from moving into higher-risk categories. Research by Dee Eddington, Ph.D., director of the Health Management Research Center at the University of Michigan, confirms that it's more cost-effective to focus on the healthy, rather than the unhealthy: • An employee who migrates from low-risk to high-risk costs $350 more per year. • An employee who improves from high-risk to low-risk only saves $150 per year.
The cost of doing nothing If companies adopt a "do nothing" strategy, the majority of employees will gradually migrate to higher risk over time. And it doesn't take many employees moving to high risk to change a company's economics in a hurry. Keeping the healthy people healthy yields the best bang for the buck over the long run.
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