Company Wellness Progams – Should You Build or Buy?
Recently a survey of human resource managers showed that in 2008 just about 33% of moderately sized to large business organizations were offering health and lifestyle programs to their staff and employees.
Why are more and more companies offering their people employee wellness programs? Could it be that business owners and managers see a direct connection between employee performance and employee health?
Clearly the answer is yes. A similar study of 355 human resource and health benefits managers of companies with at least 1000 employees revealed that companies with good company wellness programs scored higher on most important revenue generating scales. They had up to 20 percent higher revenue per employee, 16 percent higher market share compared to others in their industry, and 57 percent higher returns per share for stockholders.
When a company considers introducing a health coaching service they must confront the question whether to build their own program in-house, or make an arrangement with a third-party to provide these services. Business managers must deal with this issue whenever they consider adding additional services.
Those who opt to build their own company wellness program they usually select this option because they assume this approach results in more control over the design, content and delivery of the program. They also think it will be a less time-consuming process since their own people understand their organization better than someone from the outside.
They also feel they will be able to make use of already-existing expertise within their company, to more quickly dovetail new programs with established programs that are already in place. The hope is that this will result in a lower cost program than if it was designed and/or managed by a third party new to their organization.
But as many new designers and managers of workplace wellness programs have discovered there are usually many variables to this type of program that in-house staff are unprepared to handle.
What they often learn is that creating a program from scratch just about always takes much longer than it takes someone who has extensive experience with such programs. This means there will be much less trial and error with a third-party solution. So contrary to initial assumptions it should be possible to get a third-party solution up and running more quickly and with fewer glitches and problems.
They also find that the technical aspects of running an internet-based corporate wellness program will require significant training of already-existing staff, or more likely the hiring of new staff with the technical competence to design and maintain such a program. Even then these people will likely not have the specific expertise that has been developed by a proven third-party provider of such services.
The bottom line is that if you are a manager considering the implementation of an employee wellness program you should carefully consider all the options. You may very well conclude that using a third-party service is more efficient, less stressful, and more economical.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 5:43 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.