In yesterday’s Advisor, attorney Francis Alvarez discussed legal risks of wellness programs. Today, practical considerations and an introduction to a popular wellness guide.
Each organization has to decide for itself where it belongs on the wellness/risk continuum, says Alvarez, a partner in the White Plains, New York, office of national employment law firm Jackson Lewis. Alvarez was joined in his presentation at the recent SHRM Annual Conference and Exhibition in Chicago by Michael J. Lotito, a partner in Jackson Lewis’s San Francisco office.)
Ask yourself the following questions, says Alvarez:
How deeply do you want to intrude into your employees’ private lives? You’re going to get blowback from good performers who are not interested in your wellness initiatives, says Alvarez.
Are you prepared to negatively affect the employment of good workers who have no interest in being healthy? The more lucrative your rewards for participants, the more annoyed nonparticipants will be. And if you are going to be “nuking” workers who don’t adhere to your wellness mandates, you must be prepared to fire some of your good people.
Corporate wellness programs show great ROI. And, as one expert noted, there’s little downside—even small improvements make a difference. Check out Workplace Wellness at no cost or risk. Read more
How does wellness impact your commitment to tolerance and diversity? “We appreciate and embrace and welcome with open arms all types … except those who smoke, are overweight, have high blood pressure or cholesterol, and don’t exercise.”
Best Practice = Task Force
The best practice for dealing with wellness is to form a task force, says Alvarez. You want input and buy-in from all areas and levels of the organization.
Evaluating Your Existing Program
If you already have wellness programs, have the task force review their design with an eye to the following, says Alvarez:
Compliance with federal law (ADA, HIPAA)
Compliance with state law (disability and lifestyle discrimination)
Employee relations implications:
Work-life balance initiatives
Diversity initiatives
Morale (or loss) of good performers
Intelligence gleaned from aggregate reports
Risk of incentives
Unions and your collective bargaining agreement
Wellness—NO downside! Wellness programs show impressive ROI, so management and employees are happy. And that means HR is happy. Check out BLR’s Workplace Wellness. Find out more
Considering Your First Wellness Program
If you are considering wellness programs for the first time, have the task force discuss potential programs with:
—Benefits brokers
—Firm management/executive committee.
Wade in Slowly
In smaller companies, you may just have to start implementing, but in larger companies, says Alvarez, wade in slowly. Start a pilot program and see how it works. Revise or tweak as necessary before rolling it out to the entire organization.
A Tool to Build Your Wellness Program
Well-structured and well-run wellness programs generate ROI of up to 300 percent—music to management’s ears! But the key words are well-structured and well-run, because poorly structured programs just spin their wheels—no health benefit and no positive ROI, either.
Many readers have told us that BLR’s comprehensive guidebook, Workplace Wellness: Healthy Employees, Healthy Families, Healthy ROI has helped them get programs up and running that achieve wellness objectives with a great ROI, while avoiding the legal hassles that, these days, seem to attend any worthwhile venture in HR.
It’s a comprehensive guide that takes you step by step through setting up a program, from convincing management all the way through to creating and implementing a workable plan for your workplace. 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. Let us know and we’ll be happy to set it up.