Employee Wellness = Cost Maintenance + Increased Productivity
Presented by Rob Cola
Are your employee benefit costs soaring? Are you constantly looking for ways to reduce those costs? If you are like most companies, you have answered a resounding “yes” to both of these questions, and have likely accepted that high health care costs are just part of your future.
You don’t have to be so quick to write off your future employee benefits as an unaffordable, uncontrollable line item in your annual budget. You can actually maintain health care costs while improving employee health and productivity.
A Case of Deja-Vu
You are probably familiar with the following scenario: it is that dreadful time of year again – time to renew your health benefits plan. You sign the papers and your broker provides you with some colorful brochures about creating a healthier lifestyle, and suggests you hand them out to your employees. You take him up on his suggestion and distribute the brochures to your employees at your annual meeting. The close of that meeting marks the close of the wellness discussion until the following year.
A Different Approach to Employee Wellness
Employee wellness is a commitment, not a product. In order to impact both your employees’ health and your bottom line, wellness needs to become a company value.
A successful wellness program helps employees understand the cost of their health care and holds them accountable for personal wellness decisions. It provides tools, such as nutrition counseling, weight management and fitness programs, that help employees make the right decisions about their personal well-being.
To create a successful program, a company must foster an environment for employee participation. Employees should have the opportunity to identify their needs and concerns, as well as to provide feedback once the programs are in place. All employees should be inspired to participate through easy-to-understand communication materials as well as incentive and supervisory-recognition programs.
Employee Wellness and Your Bottom Line
So, you have made sure that your employees are educated in the world of wellness. But what about your bottom line? The Integrated Benefits Institute recently conducted a survey that proves a well-designed wellness program can save a company more than $2,500 per employee. Most chronic diseases are associated with preventable lifestyle factors, including poor nutrition, lack of physical exercise, and tobacco use; therefore, with slight behavior modifications, a company can substantially decrease health care costs.
Benefits to Employee Wellness
Developing programs that improve your employees’ health helps them lead healthier lives while also helping your business’ bottom line. Employees experience an increase in job satisfaction, improvements in physical and mental health, reduced absenteeism and usage of health care benefits, and reduced injuries. You experience an increase in productivity that directly affects your bottom line. Now that’s a formula for success.
Be Careful My Fellow Americans You Always Get What You Ask For
Presented by Jerry Wolf
If like me, you objectively evaluate the history of the American consumer, you come to realize that in this great country of ours, we generally get what we ask for when it comes to products in the marketplace. It doesn’t matter if it’s large gas guzzling SUVs, fat and calorie laden fast food or kitchens with stainless steel appliances and solid granite counter tops. Yes, say what you will, corporate America does a pretty good job of supplying us with our wants and needs.
Why then should anyone be surprised when sophisticated, and yes, sometimes abused mortgage products hit the marketplace and are sold to a broad cross section of American home owners. These products, not available a decade ago, help to insure a steady flow of money into the mortgage market. Accordingly, they help to feed that giant real estate engine which plays such a large part in keeping our economy moving forward.
Too numerous to cover in an article of this length, these products range from 100% financing with no mortgage insurance requirements, to Pay Option ARMs. The latter gives the borrower up to four payment choices each month the mortgage is outstanding. Throw in the sexy Asset Management Mortgage, a type of ARM that gives the more sophisticated borrower an interesting and conservative method to pay off the typical 30 year fixed rate mortgage in about 18 years, and you have a bevy of programs from which to choose.
What then you ask is the problem? Well, it’s the same problem that has always existed in this business and, unfortunately, will continue to exist as long as there are those mortgage brokers who choose to put their own interests above those of their clients. Certainly, there are always going to be those borrowers who look to blame others for their own poor judgment in handling their financial affairs. I liken those folks to the woman who sued McDonalds because her coffee was too hot and she burned herself when it fell into her lap. Intelligent adults, when dealt with fairly, should be accountable for their own actions.
I am not concerned about the borrowers who have been given the appropriate disclosures in writing and who have had the mortgage program explained to them at inception. These are the individuals who have indicated that they understand not only the benefits, but any coinciding risks of such programs. Neither should regulators be concerned about this group. Should someone in this group try to play the victim when faced with the results of bad decision making on their part, then shame on them. What concerns me is the less sophisticated borrower who has been sold a mortgage program by a broker who knows that the product is inappropriate for his client. It is this type of broker that has denigrated the industry. It is this type of broker who needs to be culled from the industry. The consumers’ trust in mortgage brokers, and the various programs that they present, needs to be restored to the high level necessary to maintain confidence that the huge volume of transactions performed by knowledgeable brokers every day is done with the best interests of the client in mind.
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