Healthy Employees and a Healthy Bottom Line
May 20, 2014
Healthy Employees Lead to a Healthy Bottom Line
Are you ready to give your employees the gift of good health?
Are you ready to reap the cost benefits associated with healthy employees?
– Keep your employees happy and healthy
– Improve productivity and morale
– Attract better quality hires
– Reduce sick days and its costs
– Reduce your health insurance costs
– Increase your bottom line
Why Should Your Company Encourage Healthier Employees?
Pride in your company – A great cafeteria is the sign of a company that cares about their employees. As a perfect example, see how Google and Apple keep their employees happy and healthy.
Stay on top of the most recent food trends – Smart and productive employees are aware of the newest trends in healthy food. Gluten-free. Dairy-free. Low Carb Diet. Paleo Diet. Vegetarian. Vegan, etc. Why not offer it to them?
Attract better employees – When potential hires visits your company to apply for a job, take them to your cafeteria and show them how much you care about your employees by feeding them healthy food.
Happier employees – Healthy employees are more productive not only because they will not take as many sick days but also because they will feel proud of belonging to such company.
Save time and stress – When a good assortment of good quality food is available on site, your employees will be less inclined to eat their lunch out. They will save time, be less stressed by their limited lunch time, and will have a better chance to relax and enjoy their food.
Better energy after lunch – Not only your employees will be healthy overall, they will also be more productive. They will feel more energetic and will not tend to take a nap after lunch or feel sluggish after a carb-loaded or fried heavy lunch.
Better food quality equals a better company – As customers and employees are getting more and more sophisticated when it comes to food quality and health, they will appreciate the efforts made into providing them with the healthiest food choices available.
Institutional Catering vs In House Chef – Sure, you can hand out all your food preparation to an outside vendor and wash your hands. But having your own chef and cooks lovingly cooking fresh and tasty food will reap untold benefits.
Increasing Health Care Costs are Eating Away Your Bottom Line
With the ever-mounting cost of health care being a $3 trillion a year national obsession, it’s no surprise that companies are looking for any ways to have healthy employees.
Since 2001, family health-care premiums have risen by 113 percent, compared that with just 27 percent for inflation overall. Employer-sponsored family health insurance premiums have jumped by 9 percent this year, bringing the annual cost to more than $15,000 for a family of four, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. And that’s not even taking into account the new national health plan, the Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. That’s significantly higher than the general inflation rate of 3.2 percent. Such hyperinflation in health-care costs is putting downward pressure on wages and new hiring, and it’s applying the brakes to our economic recovery.
What are the Reasons for These Ever Increasing Health Costs?
A major and growing stumbling block is an epidemic of obesity, which can lead to other long-term health problems like diabetes and heart troubles. Americans have the world’s highest rates of obesity, a problem that contributes to this country’s high rates of chronic lifestyle disease and disability. For example, the direct cost of obesity to United States corporations is estimated to be a whopping $13 billion per year.
Overweight and obese employees lead to higher health care utilization rates, lowered productivity, increased absenteeism, elevated health and disability insurance premiums and other financial consequences that affect each employer’s bottom line. Even setting aside direct medical expenses, a new Gallup study estimates that preventable chronic conditions cost the U.S. $153 billion in lost productivity every year.
A More Profitable Company
As companies feel the financial burden of these health issues epidemic, some are trying to help their bottom line by helping employees reduce their waistline. For example, Dow Chemicals knows that their lost productivity increases their health care costs by 8 percent to 10 percent a year. They found out that if they succeeded in keeping their spending at the lower end of that inflation rate, they would be saving tens of millions of dollars per year.
Among the 62% of big companies offering wellness incentives, the dollar amount has risen to $430 per employee from $260 five years ago. But the payoff is real: J&J says wellness efforts have saved the company $250 million in health care costs over the past decade. From 2002 to 2008, that worked out to a return of $2.71 for every dollar spent.
Prevention is the Solution
Impressed by the advances in modern medicine, we have accepted the false notion that we can spend more and more on medical treatments instead of focusing on what creates these illnesses in the first place: bad diets and unhealthy lifestyles.
Until recently, most people’s attitude has been: “As long as my insurance pays for it, I’ll be fine.” This kind of thinking is what has brought us to where we are now: unhealthy employees taxing your company’s finances and a healthcare system that is taxing this country’s economy.
According to the National Business Group on Health in Washington, D.C., studies have shown that for every $1 a company puts into corporate wellness programs, $3 are saved through decreased sick days, increased worker productivity and employee retention.
I believe that since roughly half of health care costs are stemming from lifestyle choices, when we learn to improve their lifestyle, there is a greater chance to lower overall health care costs for your employees and your company.
Time to Change Your Health and Food Policy? What can I do to help?
Over the past few years, I helped a multi-unit health care company improve their food quality offerings, making their customers happier and improve their bottom line. Is your company next?
Use my expertise as a French chef and holistic nutritionist to improve your bottom line and keep your employees happy and healthy. My tools are education and tasty food.
Most people, unless they are dealing with food allergies or debilitating digestive issues, are not paying too much attention to what they eat. They hear about excess calories, fats and salt but they don’t know how to apply it in their daily life. The best thing any company can do to lower their insurance costs is to help their employees by offering such a program.
– I work with your in-house chef to create a seasonal menu made with fresh and local ingredients. I offer tasty and healthy recipes with nutritional analysis. All of this for a great return on your investment.
– A comprehensive preventive program designed for sustained weight loss and improved lifestyle behaviors with a nutrition and complementary fitness program. One will not work without the other. It does not matter if you work out every day to lose those extra calories if you don’t learn to avoid them in the first place.
– If needed, I also offer private consultations to help your employees with their particular health issues (food allergies, gluten and dairy allergies, diabetes, etc.) and create a healthy customized diet based on their particular needs.
My award-winning books: A peek into my food philosophy
To learn more about my personal brand of healthy eating, please check any one of my four award-winning and Amazon.com best sellers: “How to Lower your Cholesterol with French Gourmet Food”; “Living Gluten and Dairy-Free with French Gourmet Food”; “Health French Cuisine for Less Than $10/Day” and my latest one, “Paleo French Cuisine”. You can find them on my Books page. All of them are available at Amazon.com.
A Votre Santé,
Chef Alain Braux
For further questions, or to set up a free initial consultation, please contact me at: alainbraux@gmail.com
leave a comment