Corporate Wellness Programs
Is your corporate wellness program effective? In order to have a productive and successful work force, we need to assess factors that can derail productivity…. illness and disease.
Often times, corporations offer their employees some type of incentive based off their BMI. Don’t get me wrong, BMI is not a horrible indicator for health, but it is not a great one either. BMI is a measurement based off your weight in relation to your height. So, what about those people who are stronger and have a lot of muscle? Since muscle weighs more than fat they tend to“weigh more than they should” and are classified as obese. This automatically eliminates them from receiving any corporate benefit. Secondly, there is those individuals who are “skinny fat.” They look lean and healthy on the outside but internally there’s a different story being told. They could have chronic low muscle from disordered eating and be malnourished. This leads to a compromised immune system and leaves them vulnerable to disease, but yet they are automatically classified as “healthy.”
How to Get a True Measure of Health
So what’s a better way to measure your employees health for a corporate wellness program? The answer is a true body composition assessment. This should be performed and analyzed by a professional in your area. We recommend the SECA mBCA. It’s a medical grade piece of equipment that will tell a person how many pounds of fat an individual has, their true body fat percentage, how many pounds of muscle they have in their limbs and torso, visceral fat, hydration, and cellular health. This assessment is very simple and takes less than a minute per person to p
erform and should be followed up with a consultation. In addition to assessing their true body fat percentage, we really should also consider visceral fat. Viseral fat is the fat surrounding the internal organs. This type of fat leads to heart attack, stroke, and diabetes. As we know, this equates to more dollars spent on medical benefits and health care.
Secondly, prevention and education are key to maintain the vitality of your workforce. Employees need to be educated in what their bodies need for fuel to prevent muscle breakdown and fat gain. When implemented, corporations will save millions of dollars in healthcare. But when we are talking about this understanding and education it needs to be individualized for each person. The best way to accomplish this is to have a resting metabolic rate test performed by a professional and translated into some type of nutritional plan for the employee. Corporate benefits should then be dictated by the persons participation and dedication to their nutritional plan. Improvements will be measured by a follow up body composition assessment.
A successful corporate wellness program will produce a significant decrease of fat and visceral fat, an educated workforce equipped with tools to make better decisions based of what their bodies need and corporate dollars saved.