True cost of an unhealthy employee

Most businesses want to offer health insurance for their employees because everybody needs health insurance, especially an employee who has a family. Most employees have discovered that if they have an employer who offers a health insurance plan they can get a plan at a better rate than if they had to pay for it with their own money. By offering health insurance to employees employers can hold onto good employees because of the cheaper rate at which employers can get a health insurance plan. Another benefit of offering health insurance is that the money a business pays for health insurance is a tax deduction so it can lower the amount of taxes that a business owes.

However, if an employer is offering health insurance to their employees they are also going to be facing problems because of how many employees they have that are unhealthy or how many of them are participating in unhealthy lifestyle practices.

Perhaps the most common unhealthy practice that Americans suffer from is obesity. It has been proven that obese employees file more workers' compensation claims than employees who are not obese, which costs the company more in the long run because insurance rates go up with an increased number of claims. Not to mention the fact that most of the time obese employees cost the business more in productivity and healthcare costs each year when compared to healthy employees who are not considered obese because they tend to engage in unhealthy lifestyle practices, such as smoking or lack of exercise.

Employees that smoke also cost the company money because they tend to be sick more often than employees who don't smoke. What this means for the company is that employees who smoke are going to use more of their sick leave than healthy employees. Not to mention that these employees are at a higher risk for serious diseases, such as lung cancer, lung disease, and heart disease. The insurance companies are aware of the higher risk employees who smoke or who are obese have for getting these serious diseases so they increase the price of insurance to help cover those costs.

One of the most popular things that employers do to offset the cost of unhealthy employees is to use wellness programs. A wellness program is a great thing for employers to use to help encourage their employees to be healthier. The cue to look for about knowing if you need a wellness program or not is to see how many of your employees are choosing to lead an unhealthy lifestyle, which will mean you are paying more than average for health insurance costs. However, the biggest downfall to wellness programs is that they cost money to set up. While there are a variety of price ranges for wellness programs, most of the time the better program is going to cost the business more money.

In business the one thing that you need to remember is that time is money and taking the time to encourage unhealthy employees to be healthy is going to take time. What this means for business is teaching your employees to be healthy is going to cost your business money. So instead of spending the money to hire out a wellness program you can begin your own wellness program in the office. To do this you are going to have to spend some money because you will need to have certain resources and spend some time on creating the wellness program. In all actuality how much time you spend on creating the wellness program is going to depend on how many unhealthy employees you have in your business.