Boost Your Employee Health ROI: An Excerpt from Compliance and Culture: A Guide to Employee Matters © Employer Advisors Network, Inc. 2006

Here's a list of front-end employee health benefits that can provide a healthy return on investment:

• Make nutritional supplements, snacks, and beverages available.
• Provide easy access to healthy lunches - and bring in health-care professionals to conduct lunch-and-learns.
• Get rid of any free or easy junk food. If your employees want to poison themselves, let them do it on their own nickel.
• Buy books, videos, and CDs on health. Give employees a cash bonus if they complete a questionnaire about these materials.
• Make available meditation tapes and CDs.
• Work with your insurance carrier to offer free or low-cost medical exams that includes blood work, urinalysis, an EKG, and more.
• Give workers free or reduced-cost chiropractic visits, 15-minute neck massages at the office, "spa rewards," and other nurturing activities.
• Start a company softball team, bowling league, soccer club, or any other form of recreational activity.
• Offer gym memberships, together with workout clothes bearing your company logo.
• Encourage employees to volunteer at the Special Olympics. Everyone who does realizes that there's no excuse for poor health.
• Set up an employee blood donation program. Imagine your company being responsible for the blood provided to newborn babies, auto-accident victims, elders going through open-heart surgery, and so on. What a powerful connection with the community!
• Hold contests to learn who walked the most, went to the gym most often, dropped the most pounds, quit smoking or drinking the longest, etc. Reward the winners with a trip to the spa or a voucher at the local health food store.
• Conduct an anonymous employee health survey and publish the results where everybody can see them, with a banner that says, "This Is Where We Are Today - Where Will We Be Next Year?" Keep updating the results annually.
• Create a "mellow room" where people can sit down and relax for a few minutes. Collect employee suggestions about what the room should look like, and then set some boundaries on its usage.
• Encourage people to laugh on the job. The medicinal impact of a good laugh is well documented.
• Bring a magician into work. Employees of one company remembered one such visit for years afterward - and each time they talked about it, they released positive endorphins into their system."
• Teach employees the proper use of high-deductible Health insurance plans and health savings accounts (HSAs).
• Go to the Wellness Council of American Web site www.welcoa.org. For the information Uncle Sam has collected on worker health, check out www.cdc.gov/niosh/homepage.html. Visit the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services site at http://www.hhs.gov. Don't miss the American Cancer Association's Web page (www.americanheart.org). 
• Make your employees' joy greater than their effort. Make their futures brighter than their present. Give them something to be healthy for!

The list goes on. Use your imagination and that of your employees to help manage today's "health care crisis" - and boost your bottom line.

Editor: Marianne M. Lawhead (mlawhead@sheastokes.com) (This publication is the property of the Atlanta Association of Legal Administrators. Reproduction or reprint without prior permission is strictly prohibited. Click here to request reprint permission.)

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