By Brooke Chaplan
Keeping your employees healthy is not only good for them, but also good for your bottom line. Offering an excellent package of healthcare benefits can help to prevent many debilitating illnesses in your staff and keep worker’s morale high. Maintaining a high level of healthcare coverage also helps to maintain employee loyalty and attracts some of the best talent pool to your organization. Here are some things to consider in your package.
Gym Memberships
When employees exercise regularly, they lower their risk of chronic conditions such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and diabetes. Exercising also helps with maintaining a healthy body weight. Offering a gym or fitness center membership in your healthcare packages gives your employees the opportunity to get in the recommended 30 minutes of moderate exercise per day. Even if your insurance plan does not cover the full cost of gym membership, a discount can be helpful to your staff.
Health Coaching
Many people know that they need to make lifestyle changes to be healthier, but aren’t sure where to start. Offering healthy lifestyle coaching can help your workers to make strides toward a healthier life. You could offer group health coaching sessions during lunch periods or after work hours. Your organization could also offer individual health coaching benefits.
Alternative Medicine
Medical research has shown that some types of alternative medicine are equally effective as Western medicine. Consider including coverage for services such as chiropractic care, massage therapy, and acupuncture. These benefits can help employees who have conditions such as pinched nerves, sciatica, and chronic pain. These services can also help employees to lower stress and cope with difficult situations in their personal and professional lives. Confer with a professional who has a healthcare master’s degree to see what might be legally covered in your benefits package.
Dental Care
Good dental health is vital to good overall health. Providing dental care services as a part of your healthcare package will help to ensure that your employees do not end up with painful dental conditions such as abscessed teeth. A toothache can decrease productivity, and a severe tooth infection may cause workers to miss days or even weeks of work. Including restorative services such as crowns, dentures, and dental fillings helps to restore full functioning to your employees’ mouths and cover you for absences they might otherwise incur.
When putting together your corporate healthcare benefits package, remember that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. All of the services that aim to prevent chronic diseases such as diabetes and high cholesterol could end up saving you a considerable amount of money in the future. A healthy workforce is also more productive, energetic and profitable.
Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most her time hiking, biking and gardening. For more information contact Brooke via Twitter @BrookeChaplan.
