At home and at work, an employee's overall health is influenced by many factors including diet, physical fitness, stress, hypertension, smoking and alcohol use. For a business, employees with these health-risk factors can affect a company's bottom line with reduced productivity, absenteeism and increased healthcare and workers' compensation costs. 

Obesity: More than two-thirds of U.S. adults are overweight or obese.  Rising obesity levels directly impact workers' compensation claims costs. Compared with healthy-weight workers, the most obese workers:

•  File 2x more workers’ compensation claims
•  Have 13x more lost workdays
•  Have 6.8x higher medical claim costs

Smoking: More than 46 million U.S. adults smoke—about 20% of the population.  On average, smokers are absent from work 6.5 more days per year than non-smokers, which leads to lost productivity and missed revenue opportunities.

In addition, because smoking is linked to several chronic diseases, employers pay higher healthcare costs for smokers.

Because full-time employees spend a significant amount of time at work, it makes good business sense to establish a wellness program to address these risk factors. A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study showed the following benefits to businesses that added a physical activity program to their work site:

• Reduced healthcare costs by 20 to 55%
• Reduced short-term sick leave by 6 to 32%
• Increased productivity by 2 to 52%

Wellness Resources for Policyholders

Wellness E-Newsletter:

Our monthly wellness e-newsletter is filled with health tips for all facets of your life.  Learn about:

• Ways to improve nutrition.
• Activity levels to promote a long and healthy life.
• Tips to boost your productivity.
• News of the latest health trends.
• Guides to finding useful health information on the web.
• And much more!

Developing an Effective Wellness Program: In order to achieve real improvement, you first need to set goals and devise a reasonable strategy for reaching them.	Employee Wellness Program Resource Kit: The online resources contained in this kit offer step-by-step instructions, sample programs and success stories to help you tailor a program for the unique needs of your employees.