Computer Professionals

Helth care cost

Why corporate wellness program

Corporate health & wellness programs have a 20-year track record of being a great investment for corporations.

If run correctly, the return on investment (ROI) is hard to ignore .According to the Partnership for Prevention; a meta-review of 42 published studies of worksite health promotion programs shows:

· Average $5.93-to-$1 savings-to-cost ratio

· Average 28% reduction in sick leave absenteeism

· Average 26% reduction in health costs

· Average 30% reduction in workers' compensation and disability management claims costs

With so much empirical evidence that health & wellness programs save companies money, why are so many corporations cutting back on these programs when they need them the most? The answer is simple, if the company does not put aside funding for these programs they will not happen. Many companies fund minor health & wellness programs out of their discretional budgets so there is no firm commitment to the health of their employees, and it shows.

“This has been a fundamental flaw with many corporate health & wellness programs,” says John Buckley, president of Health Fairs Direct, a 12 year old corporate health and wellness coordination company. “We routinely receive requests from corporations, large and small, that they want to ‘Create a Culture of Health & Wellness’. When we ask them how they plan on accomplishing this and what their budget is we typically hear that they do not have a budget and were hoping to get a free health fair.”

Some corporations have been led to believe that they can receive free health fairs and medical screenings from local doctor’s offices. These out-of-network doctors invest their marketing dollars into offering enticing freebies to corporations as a trade off for getting access to corporate employees with good insurance. Some of the most common enticements are free total cholesterol and glucose screenings or even free lunch for the entire company. These enticements become hard to resist when there is no budget set aside to provide professional health fair services. But they come with very high back end costs to the corporation. For more information on these back end costs as well as the liability of working directly with local doctors, or doctors disguised as health fair companies visit:http://www.healthfairsdirect.com/CorporateBenefits/WOF/

Ergonomics Benefits

How Ergonomics Improves Work and Safety
The association between work and injury and illness is centuries old. It is even thought that Ancient Man concerned himself with developing the right tools that allowed for the most efficiency and least amount of discomfort.

Today, we continue to look for ways to improve the relationship between our "tools" and our jobs. One way to do that is to look at the risk factors in the workplace. These can be divided into 3 areas: physical characteristics, environmental characteristics, and workplace hazards.

1. Physical characteristics of work:

· Posture

· Force

· Repetition

· Duration

· Recovery time

· Velocity/acceleration

· Heavy dynamic exertion

2. Segmental vibration Environmental characteristics of work:

· Heat

· Cold

· Lighting

· Noise

· Whole body vibration

3. Workplace hazards:

· Physical stress

· Mental stress

· Workload

· Hours (shifts, overtime)

· Slips and falls

· Fire

· Exposure hazards (electrical, chemical, biological, radiation)

Tips for Ergonomics

Computer Ergonomics

Poor posture, lack of proper equipment and incorrect ergonomic information are all contributing factors to an improper computer setup.

some key DO & DON’T are:

• Ergonomics should be based on fact, research, experimentation and theory using body mechanics as a base line.
• Remember that ergonomics is personal. What works for someone else may not work for you.
• Do not settle for a desk without a keyboard tray or some other way to set the keyboard height and angle correctly.
• Do not place the keyboard on top of the desk.
• Do not place the monitor above your head.
• Do not sit in a rigid and upright position.
• Do not lean forward.
• Do not work for long periods of time without moving. You need to take frequent breaks. They keep you awake, productive and healthy and keep you from developing Deep Vein Thrombosis.
• The Monitor
• • Position the monitor to minimize glare by placing it at a right angle to light sources or windows
  • Place the monitor as far away from you as possible while maintaining the ability to read without consciously focusing. Keep a minimum distance of 20 inches.
  • Place the center of the screen at a 15 degree down angle from your eyes with your neck only slightly bent holding your head perpendicular to the floor.
  • Align the monitor and the keyboard / mouse
  • Set the refresh rate at a minimum of 70 Hz to limit flicker
  • If a document holder is used, it should be placed at approximately the same height as the monitor and at the same distance from the eyes to prevent frequent eye shifts between the monitor screen and reference materials.
  • Get regular eye check-ups.
  • Adjust as needed for larger screens. You may need to sit farther away and increase the font size to take full advantage of the larger screen

What is the Coporate Wellness program

Corporate Health And Wellness Programs

Exercise decreases weight, decreases risks of heart attack and stroke, helps to control blood pressure (BP) and diabetes, and improves mood. Studies increasingly show that exercise may also help reduce the occurrence of certain kinds of cancer.

Scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently documented another major advantage – exercise improves the health of the nation’s medical care expenditures.3 As reported by the CDC, physically active person incur $865 less per year in health costs than inactive people .

Dr. Michael Moore, vice president and chief medical director at Nationwide Insurance in Columbus, maintains that exercise is the most effective tool in health maintenance. “If you may prescribe exercise in a pill, it would be the number-one prescribed treatment in the world,” he said.

In step with Dr. Moore’s prescription, almost one-third of United States corporations help employees pay for fitness center memberships, as reported by an Associated Press report. Subsidizing fitness center memberships is just one way corporations encourage active lifestyles.

Well-liked fitness-forward initiatives –

• Begin a company softball or volleyball league.

• Compile and distribute information about opportunities to join athletic groups in your community.

• Offer partial or complete reimbursement for exercise facility memberships.

• Hold aerobics, karate, yoga or other types of fitness courses onsite.

• Give extended lunch hours for employees who commit to lunchtime fitness programs.

• Introduce an onsite exercise facility that is free, or available at a nominal cost, to employees and their families.

• Conduct on-site wellness fairs that include fitness demonstrations and promote fitness activities and resources.