Making the Case for Workplace Wellness

For years, worksite health promotion was one of those ideas that employers talked about in a "How could it hurt?" kind of way. But these days, the business case for protecting employee health is hard to ignore. Return on investment is assessed by some sources as high as 300 percent—that’s $3 for every dollar invested.
 
According to one estimate, employers can earn back the cost of wellness programs over the course of 5 years if they reduce risk factors by only about 0.2 percent. The idea is that improving employee health can help combat what some call an epidemic of chronic diseases.

Conditions such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes are extremely expensive to treat, and they dramatically drive down production. According to PricewaterhouseCoopers®, "Workplace wellness efforts can positively impact human capital investments."

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Great news! BLR’s renowned Safety.BLR.com^® website now has even more time-saving features. Take our no-cost site tour! Or better yet, try it at no cost or obligation for a full 2 weeks.

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Consider the Facts

More than 95 percent of health expenditures, including most of the billions employers spend on health coverage, are committed to diagnosing and treating disease only after it becomes manifest. (Source: Partnership for Prevention)

Researchers estimate that preventable illness makes up approximately 70 percent of the burden of illness and the associated costs. (Source: New England Journal of Medicine)

Poor health habits take an enormous toll on American business. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):

• It costs employers an average of $1,300 a year for an employee who smokes.
• Up to 40 percent of industrial fatalities can be linked to alcohol consumption and alcoholism.
• Job stress is estimated to cost employers $200-300 billion annually.
• As many as 1 million employees are absent on an average workday because of stress-related problems.
• At least 100 million workdays are lost each year to lower back pain at a cost of about $20 billion.
• One in five American adults is obese, and obesity is a major contributing factor for illnesses such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes.

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Your one-stop safety management resource, available 24/7. Go here to take a no-cost site tour or here to try it in your own office!

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Safety Information You Need

Whether it’s wellness or one of the many other workplace safety and health issues you have to deal with every day, you’ll find all information you need reported and interpreted for you 24/7 by the safety experts at Safety.BLR.com .

What’s more, this one-stop safety website is a fantastic resource for safety training materials on just about any topic you can imagine.

Training responsibilities become a snap with the website’s thousands of audio presentations, PowerPoint® presentations, prewritten safety meetings, toolbox talks, trainer’s guides, and much, much more. You’ll find training tools on more than 120 safety topics along with plain-English compliance analyses.

At a time when budget considerations are paramount, what makes more sense than an all-in-one safety training and compliance solution?

BLR recently revamped Safety.BLR.com  to better meet your needs. Those of you who used the site in its original version will be amazed by all the new features and functionality. Highlights include:

• Side-by-side state and federal compliance. By placing our state and federal regulatory analysis side by side, you easily see how to fully comply with both governmental entities.
• MSDS Library expansion. The site now provides an immense library of 3.5 million MSDS forms, with about 10,000 more added or changed every week. Need one? Just call up the chemical by name, manufacturer, product group, or CAS number, and then print it out.
• Newsletter Wizard. If you’ve ever wanted to publish a safety newsletter but felt lacking in editorial skills, this new addition is for you.
• Plan Builder. Select from our library of safety plans, customize them to suit your company’s needs, and assemble them into collections you can save in our personal library.

We’re excited about Safety.BLR.com and all of its recent enhancements, and we’re eager for you to experience it, too. That’s why we’ve created a complimentary site tour, available here. It takes just 5 minutes.

If you like what you see, you’re invited to try the site at no cost and with no obligation. We’ll even give you a complimentary special report for doing so. Go here to take a 5-minute tour of Safety.BLR.com. It may be just what you’re looking for.

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