Corporate

The Benefits to Your Company

Employee health screening and workplace health promotion can offer significant benefits to your company.

·	Businesses already offering this service find they have a higher retention rate, less staff sickness, increased performance and productivity and increased staff loyalty (see above).

Imagine an employee with unrecognised high blood pressure, slowly developing damage to arteries and major organs who one day has a serious heart attack requiring prolonged hospitalisation, intensive medical and surgical treatment and extensive rehabilitation.

Now imagine that the high blood pressure had been detected early at a workplace health screening and successfully managed. The employee would maintain good health and the employer would avoid lost productivity.

As an employer, you will be all too familiar with the increasing Health & Safety legislation demanding that companies demonstrate that they are taking measures to look after their staff, which includes their health needs. Health screening and health promotion will help you to comply and we can provide you with documentation to show that we have conducted employee health screening at your workplace. This will include a Global Report with statistics on the number of employees affected by conditions such as Stress, Repetitive Strain Injury and other work-related conditions

·	Health screening can also be offset against tax on your company profits. And, an added advantage to the employee is that company health screening is not regarded as a taxable benefit, therefore everyone gains.

·	As all our health assessments are performed by Registered Nurses, there is no VAT to add to your final bill. Health screening companies who employ unqualified or unregistered personnel are required by law to charge VAT.

Pulse Health Screening is able to offer your company a unique health screening and health promotion programme using the latest technology by medically qualified practitioners. We are able to visit your premises, which will significantly reduce the time that your staff are away from their work area. Whether you just wish your key staff to be assessed or your entire workforce, we are able to tailor-make a programme to suit your requirements. All assessments can be offset against tax on your company profits and are not subject to VAT.

As an additional service, we have teamed up with a company called Activefutures which offers health, lifestyle and performance coaching programmes for businesses. Activefutures is run by Olympian and Commonwealth Games Bronze medallist, Liz Yelling and her husband, Martin. For more information, click here.

The Need for Health Screening

In the competitive world of business, a company has to rely on the wellness of the workforce. If a number of employees are affected by ill health, productivity will be significantly disrupted.

Staff sickness is the largest cost that companies have to bear. According to figures published by the Confederation of Business Industry (CBI), 2.2 million workers in the UK suffered from work-related illness in 2003/2004, resulting in £11.6 billion in lost revenue, which is the equivalent of £476 for each employee or around 16% of salary costs. A significant proportion of this is due to lifestyle-related illness.

The Need for Health Promotion

Employees spend approximately sixty percent of their waking hours in the workplace. This presents an opportunity for the forward-thinking employer to provide a service that promotes a healthy lifestyle to the workforce.

Although it is difficult to quantify the benefits in monetary terms, international research has produced some encouraging findings. The European Network for Workplace Health Promotion (ENWHP) found the following benefits:

·	A reduction in absenteeism of between 12% and 36% among participants in Workplace Health Promotion (WHP) programmes. Every US Dollar invested in WHP brought a Return on Investment (ROI) between $ 2,5 and $ 4,8 due to reduced absenteeism costs. The ROI for medical costs amounts to 5,9.

·	In Finland it has been demonstrated that every 1 Euro invested in programs for maintaining work ability brings a return of € 4 to € 6 in productivity.

·	Cost-benefit-ratios established in US studies range from $ 3 to $ 8 for every Dollar invested in health promotion programs within 5 years.

Some companies also make the evaluations of their intervention programs available to the public: The health care costs for participants in intervention programs at DaimlerChrysler were between $ 5 and $ 16 lower per month compared to non-participants. Glaxo Wellcome's health promotion programme saved $ 1 million in 1 year and cut absence due to medical reasons by 20.000 working days between 1996 and 2003. In a comprehensive workplace health programme, a Canadian company MDS Nordion reduced absenteeism from 5.5 to 4 days annually and cut turnover to half the industry average.

At Volkswagen AG a 1% rise in the health rate led to a corresponding increase in productivity costs of 1%. This represents savings amounting to € 45 million. By implementing health promotion measures, the company has increased the health rate between 1988 and 1999 by 4.3% achieving savings in personnel costs of over € 190 million.

WHP has also proved to influence personal lifestyles and health behaviours in a positive way, for example: Between 10% and 15% of participants in smoking cessation programmes succeeded in giving up smoking. 26% of participants in programmes on weight control were able to maintain their weight 12 months after the programme had finished.

·	Another study shows that employees who consider their workplaces to be “healthy", do not only have a lower rate of absenteeism, but statistically show a significantly higher level of job satisfaction and work-morale and are less likely to change their job.