The bad news about cancer is that about one-third of us get it, and 20 percent die from it, making it the nation’s number two killer after cardiovascular disease, says Dr. W. Smith Chandler. Chandler is a board-certified physician in occupational medicine who is also an SPHR.

The good news is that it's increasingly preventable, curable, or manageable as a chronic disease. Based on current knowledge, about 75 percent of cancer is either preventable or curable through early detection, Chandler explains. The other 25 percent is more hopeless. But even those cancers are becoming more treatable as chronic diseases.

So with three-fourths of the incidence of cancer affected by preventive steps you can take, such as not smoking or having a colonoscopy, there’s reason to be optimistic about the disease if you're conscientious. Workplace wellness programs can be very important in helping people to be conscientious about cancer.

Effective workplace wellness programs should focus primarily on prevention of illness, decline, and death from cardiovascular disease and cancer, states Chandler. Secondarily, they may also address other issues such as adequate sleep, automotive safety, and prevention of alcoholism.

What's In It for Employers?

In advocating for a wellness program, Chandler advises taking a capitalistic approach and talking about saving and spending money when you approach senior management.

The fact is that wellness can make employees more productive and less expensive. Specifically, employers can anticipate improvements in these areas: reduced absenteeism, increased productivity, increased loyalty, increased job satisfaction, and decreased healthcare costs.

Wellness is win/win for employers and employees, and BLR's new Workplace Wellness shows you how to achieve it, step by step. Check it out at no cost or risk. Click for info

A Tool to Build Your Wellness Program

Chandler's approach goes a long way to helping us understand wellness. But what will you need to get a program going? The answers: careful planning, clear objectives, and strong commitment.

Many of our readers have found that BLR's comprehensive guidebook, Workplace Wellness: Healthy Employees, Healthy Families, Healthy ROI, has helped them create programs that achieve wellness objectives with a great ROI while avoiding the legal hassles that, these days, seem to attend many worthwhile ventures in HR.

Corporate wellness programs show great ROIs. And as one expert noted, there's little downside—even small improvements make a difference. Check out Workplace Wellness. Read more

It’s a comprehensive guide that takes you, step by step, through convincing management, setting up a program, and creating and implementing a workplace wellness plan for your company. The guide also includes a vast collection of ready-to-use forms, handouts, and checklists that both structure your program and provide the metrics to prove its effectiveness to management’s satisfaction.

If you’d like to examine Workplace Wellness: Healthy Employees, Healthy Families, Healthy ROI on a no-cost, no-obligation basis for 30 days, we can arrange for you to do so. Click here and we’ll be happy to set it up.