It seems everyone knows and believes that wellness is the answer. They believe it is not only the answer but getting individuals to engage in healthy behavior is the only solution to bringing down costs and increasing the health and productivity of individuals. If this is the case, than why is there still no collaboration across the industry?
All employers are having challenges getting their employees to "engage" in healthy behavior. Employers are spending money on different wellness initiatives and trying to figure out which ones have ROI and which do not. Why is this money being wasted and the industry so fragmented, when everyone could be sharing knowledge, best practices and as an industry we could be streamlining wellness programs.
After all this time, there isn't even a list employers can turn to that says, here are programs that work for a mid-size manufacturing employer, here's one that works for a small employer who has retail operations, etc, etc. For many benefits managers and wellness companies, this is not just a job, but wellness is a passion. If so, we all need to work harder in 2011 to collaborate and start pulling together these best practices.
We have to stop the lack of communication and fragmentation. We also have to help new employers who are implementing wellness programs from wasting years on initiatives that fail or don't work as effectively as others. My New Year's resolution for the industry is that we truly come together this year and take action.
About The Author
Jonathan Edelheit is Editor-In-Chief of the Corporate Wellness Magazine, the only Corporate Wellness Magazine in the industry focused on Health and Wellness in the workplace. Mr. Edelheit has been involved in US healthcare for almost ten years and ran a national healthcare administrator for almost seven years that administered healthcare plans for insurance companies, employers and governments.
While running the healthcare administrator Mr. Edelheit started to implement the first corporate wellness programs there through many tools such as health risk assessments, tele-medicine, e-health and many more options. Mr. Edelheit has been featured or mentioned in hundreds of media publications and in February 2008 was featured as a visionary in US healthcare by Executive Managed Healthcare Magazine.
Mr. Edelheit also organizes the Corporate Wellness Conference which is the only dedicated national conference on corporate health and wellness in the country and which targets employers, health insurance agents and large consulting firms. Mr. Edelheit is also an attorney.Jonathan Edelheit may be contacted at info@CorporateWellnessMagazine.com
