Encouraging Your Employees To Make Healthy Choices Could Lower Your Insurance Costs

In a tight-knit company, it’s easy for employees to share habits and hobbies. Not all habits are good though, making it likely that if a few members of your team run the risk of health problems, all of them do. For example, smoking. In some groups, it’s a social habit. Even if only one or two members of a group smoke, smoke breaks can be a group activity, ensuring that everyone involved gets a dose of second-hand smoke.

Luckily, good habits are also contagious and can be encouraged through setting a good example as well as giving incentives to establish better routines.

Some health insurance providers offer incentives for both employers and employees if the employees improve their health overall by joining a gym, quitting smoking, and taking similar steps. It’s a good decision, both in terms of finances and health, to find out what opportunities your health insurance provider offers.

Even if direct incentives aren’t available, it’s worth talking to your agent. In some cases, if you can demonstrate that your employees’ use of their health insurance has dropped, you can get your rates reduced.

On many of these workplace environment issues, you will need to get your employees’ help to move forward. Buy-in is necessary if you want your employees to change their habits, at the very least. While you can easily set policies about healthy behaviors, it can be hard to enforce such policies without causing problems with your staff. Furthermore, in some cases, you need your employees to agree to these changes even when they’re out of the office.

Take smoking again for example: Many businesses now have policies against employees smoking at work. That won’t ever stop employees from actually smoking, though — it just means that they aren’t smoking in the office. It’s worth reminding them that not only would taking some of these steps help them with their overall health, but they could bring down their costs as well, both in terms of what they contribute to their health insurance plan and their out-of-pocket expenses. ◆