5 ways to reduce staff turnover by promoting wellness

The nature of a healthcare organization is to help others improve their health, but it would save money and reduce turnover if these organizations also focused on their own employees by promoting healthy living and wellness for them.

"There's a huge cost to employers when there's turnover of any kind," said Susan Moriconi, vice president of human resources at Omnicell, a medication and supply automation company based in the San Francisco Bay area. "But when an organization is invested in and committed to the health of their employees ... those people will want to remain with their employer and make a career. Which means organizations can retain institutional memory and scale of knowledge that people gain while they're working." Additionally, healthy employees are both more productive and genuinely happier people.

Moriconi shared her list of five approaches healthcare organizations can take to help reduce turnover costs by promoting healthy living for their own employees.

1. Develop a wellness program

"Programs exist where companies can offer health benefit programs with scaled healthcare premiums if an employee has undergone biometric testing or other screenings made available to them," said Moriconi. Other programs offer financial incentives, like a reward of $75 for having a health screening provided by the company. Offering access to an on-site gym, exercise classes with fitness trainers at no charge and educational courses on healthy lifestyles is also beneficial to employees and employers alike.

2. Support from supervisors

Support from top leadership is incredibly important and influential. When an approach to wellness is initiated and championed by a CEO, employees see it as encouraging.

3. Offer flexible schedules

"Managers should help employees have flexible schedules which would allow them to take advantage of the programs offered," Moriconi said. It's one thing for a company to simply offer health and wellness opportunities, but it's much more beneficial if they take a proactive approach at making sure their employees have the time to take advantage of them.

4. Create work-out rooms to work in

Many companies these days are creating rooms with treadmills where people can hold a meeting or have a conference while walking.

5. Employee engagement

"Allow employees to pick something new they would like to do – a new healthy food or activity they've never tried – and reward them for it," suggested Moriconi. "Offer stress-busting challenges and have employees participate in them a couple times a week over the course of a few months." They can then earn points toward programs such as scaled premiums.

Source: healthcarefinancenews