Wellness benefits can create a healthier workforce and reduce your workers compensation liability. Employees who are aware and in tune with their personal wellness are not only are more productive, but also tend to recover from injuries at a faster rate. The end result is that the healthier employee will return to work quicker, reducing work comp costs.

A recent report from Lockton Insurance Brokers Wellness Programs: The Positive Impact on Workers' Compensation Claims examines the role that health-risk (or "co-morbid") factors, such as obesity play in workers compensation claims, and the steps that companies can take to reduce claims costs by improving employees' health.

“Effective corporate wellness initiatives have shown to be successful in not only reducing the duration of lost-time workers compensation claims, but also in promoting healthy behaviors that potentially inhibit unsafe or inattentive workplace behavior," wrote the report's author, Michal Gnatek, Vice President at Lockton Cos. "Risk managers and claims professionals should be adding employee wellness to the available arsenal of weapons to combat increasing claims.” (SHRM, Dec 13, 2013)

Helping employees create healthy habits will lead to employees that spend more time on the job and less time in the doctor's office. For more information on the effectiveness of and creating wellness programs check out online resources from the Society for Human Resource Management and Wellness Council of America.

Source: Expert Insites from WorkSafe Center at Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance.