A Proven Employee Wellness Plan for Dallas Fort Worth Texas Small Businesses Owners.

Healthy Employees Save Dallas Fort Worth Texas Small Businesses Money

Very few Dallas Fort Worth, Texas small business owners or their employees will dispute the fact: that healthy employees are less expensive and more productive than unhealthy employees.  Healthy employees have fewer medical claims, and have less absenteeism and less disability claims. 

In fact, the Center for Disease Control estimates that 75% of all diseases are preventable.  Imagine the tremendous savings to your business and to your employees if you could help prevent 75% of all the diseases among your workforce.  Keeping employees and dependents healthy, helping employees improve their health, and helping employees with health conditions aggressively manage their conditions is smart business.

Another unfortunate fact is that only 4% of our country's health care dollars are spent on prevention, and 96% on detection and treatment of disease.  This could be because the big health insurance companies reimburse big pharma drug companies, and medical providers such as doctors and hospitals are compensated for detection and treatment of disease and little attention seems to be given to prevention of illness and disease.

But the truth is that most of the diseases that are preventable are a result of lifestyle choices made by individuals.  The State of Texas Comptroller estimates that over two thirds of all Texans are overweight or obese, and about 10% of the adult population uses tobacco.  Obesity causes illnesses such as diabetes, illnesses of the heart and circulatory system, and stroke.  Tobacco use causes death from cancer, heart attack and stroke.  Several other chronic, debilitating diseases are caused by the lifestyle choices of overweight or tobacco-using Texans.  These diseases cost Texas small businesses billions of dollars every year in health claims and lost productivity.

A single major medical claim from an employee or a dependent spouse in a Dallas Fort Worth small business's group health insurance plan can easily cost the company several hundred thousand dollars due to an increase in medical insurance premiums, and lost wages. These premium increases are compound, and impact a company for years.  And a company with an employee with a single major health issue may be unable to find affordable group health insurance from another carrier because of the rate up on pre-existing conditions of the employee workforce or dependents. 

Another major cost to small businesses is what is known as "presenteeism," or the loss of productivity of an employee with a health issue who is able to go to work, but who is not performing at capacity either due to the illness itself or due to the lack of concentration due to the illness.  In other words, a major illness in the family may not keep an employee from showing up to work and drawing a pay check, but it may keep the employee from doing a satisfactory level of work.  While you may think "it won't happen at my company," multi-year studies have proven that presenteeism is a more prevalent and greater expense to small businesses than medical-related absenteeism.

Big businesses in Dallas Fort Worth that can afford to self-insure their employee medical expenses can choose to implement employee wellness plans that identify at-risk employees, and can have programs that help employees and their family manage their existing illnesses and improve their lifestyles (i.e., lose weight and stop use of tobacco.) 

But for small businesses, the need for a healthy employee workforce is as great or greater than in small businesses, and the consequences of an unhealthy workforce is much greater than in a big business.  Small businesses usually cannot afford to have "on the bench" backup talent that big companies ovten have; the loss of a single key employer can devastate a small business.

Yet, there are very few simple and affordable solutions that a small to mid size business in  Dallas Fort Worth Texas can implement that will help improve the health of the workforce.  This post illustrates a foolproof solution by Group Benefits Advisors that can help small businesses build a healthier workforce and a healthier bottom line.