Control Health Care Costs, Increase Productivity with a Wellness Program

January 11^th, 2008

             

Providing health insurance and other fringe benefits for employees of your small business is a large expense that is increasing at alarming rates each year. Many small business owners are faced with the prospect of discontinuing health benefits or cannot offer it to their employees due to the prohibitive costs. Workplace wellness programs may offer a solution and address other issues besides health insurance costs.

Workplace wellness programs have become increasingly popular in recent years, especially in larger corporations, due to success at reducing not only health care costs but also absenteeism and employee turnover. And wellness programs enhance the moral of employees resulting in increased productivity, among other things.

As a small business owner, inherent advantages lie within making a wellness program successful since it is easier to change the workplace culture, not to mention the plethora of cost-effective measures available for small businesses.

Like anything, there's a right way and a wrong way to institute a wellness program. Any approach must be comprehensive in order for it to be successful. An effort such as this must have the involvement company leaders and follow a simple plan with simple goals. Also, an apparatus must be available to employees to exercise and eat better on and off the job.

Many cost-effective options exist to promoting wellness in the workplace. The Wellness Councils of America offer resources and assistance to companies of any size looking to institute a wellness program. Whatever course you take, the health and happiness of your employees has a direct impact on your companys financial health.

Posted by: Lisa Banks, Editor (Lisa)

Posted in: Human Resource Management | Comments (0)

Key Employees Can And Will Leave Your Business, Are You Prepared?

December 19^th, 2005

             

by Justin Woolich
Business Systems Manager

Very few businesses can claim to be prepared for the loss of key employees. Quite often it is an unexpected and unplanned for event that causes quite a bit of disruption to 'business as usual'.

It is quite a gut wrenching experience to see an employee you have worked with over a period of time leaving your business. Even if the parting of ways is on good terms with a period of handover, you just know that there is so much information walking out the door with your former employee and there is nothing you can do about it.

And this is only just the beginning...

While laboring through a period of being understaffed and overworked you are then faced with the task of recruiting a new employee to fill the vacant position. This is followed by the inevitable probation and training period where, hopefully the new employee comes up to speed and is able to pick up where the former employee left off.

The problem is: What exactly was it that the former employee really did? They always seemed to be busy and on the rare occasion that they were absent due to illness, there were those problems that arose that were only truly resolved when they returned and took control and 'cleaned things up'.

There has to be a better way...

Fortunately quite a bit can be done to minimize the impact of situations like this on our business. And like most truly worthwhile solutions the steps required to complete this part of your business development does take some effort on your part.

There is an established path that you can follow to get your business in order and the benefits to you and your employees are much farther reaching than just minimizing the impact of key employees leaving you.

The following is by no means a definitive list of what is required. But it does give you some idea of the steps required.

1) Create a flexible forward thinking Organization Chart defining the positions you require in your business.

2) Determine what the responsibilities are for the positions in your business.

3) Assign Employees to relevant positions in the Business.

4) Document key information that is critical to your business and make it available to your employees.

5) Work with your employees to define what it is they do, how they do it and most importantly how it could be done better.

6) Record, optimize then implement the business systems you have identified.

7) Assign the business systems to the relevant positions and monitor their use.

By consistently following these steps for all positions in your business you will insulate yourself from some of the problems that occur when key employees leave your business.

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Posted by: Lisa Banks, Editor (Lisa)

Posted in: Human Resource Management | Comments (11)