Home > Employee Wellness

Every employer wants healthy, happy employees: employees that are more productive, use health insurance appropriately, take less time sick time, and feel good about themselves and their work. While the "bottom line" responsibility for taking care of health rests with the employee, the employer makes a choice: to support employee wellness through implementing policy changes within the company and through starting an onsite wellness program.

General Information

You can create a workplace that encourages a healthy lifestyle and helps employees acquire and maintain positive health habits. Participation in a worksite wellness program can improve an employee’s health, outlook and physical and mental capacity to be more productive at work.

Get Started

The Center for Well-Being can help your company create an environment that supports wellness. We can:

• Provide a complete package of wellness programs on-site, custom tailored to your workforce;
• Review your physical setting, policies, and formal and informal culture, and recommend ways to make your company more wellness-friendly;
• Help you implement a program that your employees feel "ownership" of and will participate in.

Worksite Wellness Online Toolkit

“Bottom-line” Benefits

• Improve productivity
• Reduce sick leave/absenteeism
• Reduce use of health benefits
• Reduce worker's comp claims
• Reduce unintentional injury
• Lower turnover (reduces high costs of recruitment and training)

Qualitative Benefits

• Improve employee morale: show your employees you care
• Increase employee loyalty: attract and retain health minded employees
• Reduce organizational stress/tension/friction to maximize productivity
• Improve employee decision-making

Program Details

We begin our partnership with our wellness consultation services that customize our wellness components to your organization. First, we conduct a wellness interest survey for all your employees to determine what they would like in their wellness program. At the same time, we assess how well the organization promotes wellness. From these measurements and discussions with employees and management, we uncover issues and provide recommendations to address these issues in the upcoming year. Once the purpose of the wellness program is elicited, we will develop an evaluation and tracking plan to show your wellness program is successful. All our services are provided by experienced health professionals who are governed by a well-respected board of directors.

Personal Wellness Profile / Health Screening

A summary report highlighting the major health risks of employees and recommendations to address these risks are given to your company (all individual results remain confidential). These health risks can be measured annually to track actual health improvements and show that your wellness program is working.

Health Screening includes the following physiological measurements:

• Total cholesterol
• HDL-cholesterol
• LDL-cholesterol
• Triglyceride
• Glucose
• Blood pressure
• Resting pulse
• Body fat

Employees are given a Personal Wellness Profile to complete before the health screening. The questionnaire and test results are processed at the Center. Each participant receives a comprehensive twenty-page report that assesses their health status and guides employees to make lifestyle changes that will reduce the risk of illness/injury and increase health and well-being. Results of the screening and wellness profile can be explained to employees in a 15-20 minute individual counseling session. Our professional staff provides the counseling to answer employee questions and help each employee set wellness goals. Ask to see examples of the individual and aggregate reports.

Brown Bag Lunch Talks

Choose "brown-bag" lunch topics over the course of the year that meet your company's needs. These talks will be customized to your lunch hour. If you have requests for other topics, we will make every effort to accommodate them.

• Allergies
• Alternative Health Care and Healing
• Arthritis Self-Care
• Asthma
• Breast Cancer
• Consumer Self-care
• Creating Health
• Mind/Body Wellness
• Diabetes: Myths and Facts
• Exercise and Your Heart
• Getting in Shape
• Healthy Aging
• Memory
• Healthy Cooking
• Heart Health
• Low Cholesterol Eating
• Meditation for Health
• Menopause
• Self-Acupressure for Pain Relief
• Shoulder/Neck Care
• Starting a Resistive Weight Program
• Stress Management
• Stroke Prevention
• The Benefits of Yoga
• Understanding the Health Care System
• Why Diets Don’t Work!
• Women’s Health
• Work It Off: A New Approach to Weight Management

Wellness Programs

Behavior change programs that expand on the brown bag lunch topics can be established on-site if there is sufficient employee interest. These classes can be partially or fully funded by the individual employees. The cost is variable and usually requires a minimum number of participants. Programs can be 4, 6 or 8 sessions in length depending on the topic and focus chosen. Please inquire about topics that you may be interested in. We will do our best to accommodate your needs.

• Arthritis Self-Help
• Beyond Cholesterol
• Creating Health
• Exercise Sampler
• Meditation
• Nutrition
• Resistive Weight Training
• Self-Accupressure
• Stress-Management
• Work It Off Weight Management Program
• Yoga Classes

Additional Incentives to Join

Depending on the package purchased, employees can receive a discount on classes offered at the Center for Well-Being in Santa Rosa. The Center publishes its own newsletter focusing on healthy lifestyle and self care. A custom insert can be added to this newsletter to address specific concerns at your company and to promote wellness events.

Program Outcomes

Today, 4 out of 5 American businesses with 50 or more employees have some form of a health promotion program. What do they know that you don’t? Worksite health promotion is the long-term answer for keeping employees well. Prevention helps avoid the high costs associated with workers compensation, health care, absenteeism and reductions in productivity. Most employers offer wellness programs because they think the benefits are worth the costs. While cost sharing, managed care plans, risk rating, cash-based rebates or incentives can help shift health care costs, only having healthier employees actually prevents costs.

Worksite wellness is health care reform that works!

Reducing Absenteeism

Studies at Dupont and General Mills found 14% - 19% reductions in absenteeism. Dupont saw a total of 11,726 fewer net disability days. General Electric reports an astounding 45% decrease in absenteeism. Pacific Bell’s program decreased absent days 0.8% to save $2 million in one year. Focusing health promotion efforts on high-risk employees can lead to better results. A national manufacturing company reports a decrease of 12.2% in illness days for these employees. Prudential Insurance, disability days were 20% lower.

Return on Investment / Financial Benefits

"For every $1 the average company spends on its worksite wellness program, it receives an average return on investment of $3.40 to $7.88." – WELCOA 2010

The following company statistics show the reported return on investment (ROI) for every $1 invested in worksite health promotion programs.

Du Pont Co: (ROI: $1.42) Absences from illness unrelated to the job among 45,000 blue-collar workers dropped 14% at 41 industrial sites where the health promotion program was offered, compared with a 5.8% decline at 19 sites where it was not.

The Travelers Corporation: (ROI: $3.40) The company claims a $3.40 return for every dollar invested in health promotion, yielding total corporate savings of $146 million in benefits costs. Sick leave was reduced 19% during the four-year study.

Reynolds Electrical & Engineering Company: (ROI: $1.68) Their Stay Alive & Well program cost $76.24 per employee. Over half of the 1,600 employees participated; participants significantly lowered cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and weight and experienced 21% lower lifestyle-related claim costs than non-participants. Resulting savings: $127.89 per participant.

California County: (ROI: $1.79) To prevent back injuries among its employees, a county in California targeted white- and blue-collar workers, offered classes and fitness training. As a result, there was a significant increase in employee morale, reduced worker’s comp claims, medical costs and sick days related to back injuries.

Managing Healthcare Costs

Bank of America: For $30 per person, BofA conducted a health promotion program for retirees using a risk assessment questionnaire, self-care books and other mailed materials. Insurance claims were reduced an average of $164 per year in this group while they increased $15 for the control group. Since they were able to document significant changes in risk behavior, they anticipate greater savings in future years.

City of Mesa, Arizona: With lower health care claims, medical costs decreased 16% for employees who participated in the comprehensive health promotion program. The city realized a return of $3.60 for every dollar invested in the health of city employees.

Coca Cola: The company reported a reduction in health care claims with an exercise program alone, saving $500 per employee per year for the employees (60%) who joined their HealthWorks fitness program.

Pacific Bell: FitWorks participants claimed $300 less per case for a one-year savings of $700,000. Savings for conditions related to a sedentary lifestyle are $722 per case.

Prudential Insurance Company: The company's major medical costs dropped from $574 to $312 for each participant in its wellness program, annual medical costs fell by 46%.

Steelcase: Average medical costs of high-risk employees - those whose lifestyles include two to four health risks such as smoking, little exercise, overweight - are 75% higher than those of low-risk employees. But high-risk employees who improved their health habits through the company’s health promotion program and became low risk cut their average medical claims in half thus lowering their medical insurance costs by an average of $618 per year.

Superior Coffee and Foods: The company showed 22% fewer admissions to a hospital, 29% shorter hospital stays, and 42% lower expenses per admission when comparing costs for this division’s 1,200 employees with costs for other divisions. Long-term disability costs were down by 40%.