Why you should be concerned with employee health

As an employer, there are many things to worry about - meeting deadlines, managing employees, improving your bottom line. When it comes to their employees, employers and managers are mainly concerned with the quality and timeliness of the work their employees do. However, another thing that employers should be concerned with is the health of their employees.

There are a number of reasons you should be concerned with employee health. Employees who are unhealthy, particularly as a result of manageable things like obesity or smoking, can end up costing you and the company money.

These are just a few reasons you need to be concerned with employee health:

• Employee health directly affects productivity. Obviously, when employees have to take time off of work because they are sick, need to go to the doctor, or need to take time off to recover from hospital visits, productivity will suffer. Each employee has specific jobs to take care of, and when they are unable to be in the office working, these jobs will take longer, deadlines will be missed, and quality will be compromised because of a tendency to rush and finish things. In addition, when managers or other higher-ups within the company have poor health and are gone frequently, those who report to them may have to seek answers to their questions elsewhere, or put projects on hold until their manager gets back to work.
• Employee health influences health insurance costs. If you provide health insurance for your employees, you no doubt know that the costs of health insurance are rising steadily. One of the things that influences these costs is the health of employees within the organization. Frequent doctor visits or hospitalizations means higher costs for the insurance companies as well, so in turn, everyone is charged more for health insurance. And because the cost of health insurance is the same for individuals within the company, those who are healthy and maintain healthy lifestyles end up paying more for insurance because of the person who are at a higher risk within the organization.
• Employee health affects quality of work. Employees who are unhealthy or frequently not feeling well are more likely to be distracted or not up to working, even while at work. When machinery or other equipment is involved, this could be dangerous and even result in lawsuits. Employees working on long-term projects who are in the office intermittently may not provide work that is as high quality as someone who is there frequently.
• Employee health can influence turnover rate. Employees in poor health are more likely to quit (or die) than those who are healthy and have healthy lifestyle habits. As a result, the turnover rate will be higher than it would if your company's employees were healthy. In addition, a high turnover rate is more expensive for the company, as you have to pay to find, train, and hire new employees.

Employers have many things to worry about when operating a business. While you may think that employee health doesn't affect you as an employer, as you can see it can greatly affect the way your organization runs. You can take steps to improve the health of your employees by offering wellness programs such as weight reduction or smoking cessation programs and by modeling and rewarding healthy behavior and habits.