Wellness experts have extolled the cost-saving benefits of corporate wellness programmes in recent years. It is said that taking care of your employees’ wellbeing ensures they’ll take fewer sick days, work more efficiently, and make them loyal to your company when others come a-knocking. It seems like, for this reason, almost everyone has started using employee wellness plans, but the catch? Few corporate wellness solutions are saving money.
Gautam Gowrisankaran, a professor of economics at the University of Arizona, recently completed a study of a large wellness programme at a major hospital in St. Louis. The study results, which were published in the journal Health Affairs, led Gautam to conclude, ‘We probably shouldn’t think of wellness programmes as cost-savers, at least not in the short-term.’ The benefit of the programme was that it did seem to change the way that employees accessed health care. Yet, for the hospital system, BJC Healthcare, it created no savings.
However, Josh Stevens, CEO of Keas, a San Francisco-based social and game-focused provider of corporate wellness, argues that if you’re thinking about cost savings first, you’re not thinking properly about employee wellness programmes. Keas has raised more than $17 million in private capital from likes of Ignition Partners and Atlas Ventures, but still completely revamped and launched a new wellness product back in February. Stevens said that the company is now on the verge of closing a new round of capital to expand its business.
According to Stevens, cost savings is ‘half a loaf. The full story is engagement and productivity.’ He said that you need too look at other factors when launching a new corporate wellness programme. Firstly, are you seeing a rise in productivity? Is morale improving, is there an increase in collaboration and teamwork, or is paid time off dropping? Stevens said that this, and not money, is the first sign that a wellness programme is working.
Also, how many of your employees are keeping up with the programme? If many are dropping off, then it’s time for a rethink, but if your employees keep coming back to participate in wellness programmes then you know you have something, Stevens said. Finally, is your wellness programme integrated into the workflow of the employees, or is it asking workers to do things they would never otherwise do? Stevens noted, ‘It has to be engaging every day of the year. Otherwise it’s just an event’
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