A recent survey of human resource managers revealed that in 2008 just about 33% of moderately sized to large business organizations were offering health and lifestyle programs as part of their employment benefits package.
Why are more and more companies offering their people employee wellness programs? Could it be that business owners and managers have concluded that employee health and employee performance are directly connected?
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.
Every company considering the introduction or effective development of a health coaching service must come to grips with the question whether to build their own program with their own personnel, or contract with a third-party to provide these services. This is the “build or buy” question so familiar to managers considering adding services for which they do not have already-existing expertise.
When an organization decides to build their own health coaching services they usually choose 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 leverage already-existing expertise within their company, to more quickly integrate the new services with established programs they are already managing. 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 would-be corporate wellness programs designers have discovered there are usually many complexities inherent in this type of program that in-house staff are untrained to handle.
As they soon discover, creating a program from scratch often takes much longer than it takes someone who has extensive experience with such programs. With an experience third-party source there will be much less trial and error, and far fewer mistakes. 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.
Managers also find that the technical aspects of running an internet-based 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. As many others have already done, you may come to the conclusion that using a third-party service will take less time to implement and will cost less in the long run.
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