If you are thinking of launching a fitness/wellness program at your company, doing a Health Risk Assessment (HRA) with your workforce is a great way to kick off your program. An HRA is a health questionnaire used to provide individuals with an evaluation of their health risks and quality of life. There are benefits to both the employee and the employer with regard to an HRA campaign.
As the employer, you benefit by getting aggregate data that illustrate the potential health risks your workforce has. These risks can add up to big health care costs down the road. Your benefits department can use these data to develop corporate wellness programs to target areas where your employees need help improving their health. Your employees benefit because they may be made aware of unknown risk factors they have, and this knowledge could be a catalyst for lifestyle change.
Most HRAs incorporate three key elements – an extended questionnaire, a risk calculation or score, and some form of feedback. Feedback can be done face-to-face with a health advisor or via an automatic online report. Although individual HRA results are confidential and only shared with the person taking the assessment, aggregate data from all employee’s assessments are given to your company in order for you to understand where your employee’s health risk factors are concentrated. These reports include demographic data of participants, highlight health risk areas and often include cost projections and savings in terms of increased healthcare, absence and productivity.
Your first company-wide Health Risk Assessment will give your executive team a baseline view of the overall health risk stratification of your workforce and can help give you direction with regard to future programming. An added bonus of implementing a Health Risk Assessment campaign is that they are simple and inexpensive to execute . In many cases, the companies you use for your health care coverage can organize a health risk appraisal campaign for you (but they may or may not share aggregate data with you. Make SURE to ask what types of reports come back to your company). I suggest going with an outside company for your appraisal so that everyone in your workforce can participate in the same HRA instead of just the employees using a particular insurance program.
lifeSport Fitness would be pleased to give you a no-obligation consultation on how we can help you run an HRA campaign that will get great participation and give you the answers you need in order to plan your future corporate wellness programs.
Call 408-265-1540 today to request an HRA consultation.
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