One of the highest operating expenses for small business owners is the cost of employee benefits. One way to help contain costs is to offer a Wellness Program to your staff. Well documented research indicates that a well balanced lifestyle – including a proper diet, exercise and leisure time – leads to healthier and more productive employees. In turn, the employees’ medical utilization is reduced, and health premiums drop. Additionally, a healthy staff will have fewer sick days, be on time more often, and remain focused throughout the day.

On the other side of the coin, other studies conducted on workplace stress indicate that a stressful, unbalanced lifestyle can lead to cardiovascular risk. And of course, as the health of an employee diminishes, the utilization of health insurance increases, thereby hurting your premiums.

A study in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine found that men who report high job strain – the combination of heavy demands and little control at the office – have thicker carotid intima-media thickness (IMT). IMT is considered a reliable way of determining the early stages of atherosclerosis, the narrowing and stiffening of the arteries. One researcher on the project wrote, “”Prospective studies in older subjects have shown that even a 0.1-mm increase in carotid IMT may increase the subsequent risk of cardiovascular heart disease events by approximately 30%.”

So, you do the math: healthy lifestyle = healthy employees. Healthy employees = productive employee. Productive employee = more profitable business!

And of course, the inverse equation is true, but we don’t need to spell that out for you.

In our next post, we’ll give you a few starters to help get you and your staff on the right track to a healthier lifestyle…