Corporate wellness programs continue to get a lot of attention in the media in the US. Despite the obvious differences of such programs compared to those run Australia (many US wellness programs are aimed at reducing health insurance costs which are covered by the employer), this still makes interesting reading.

A recent survey of 225 American-based companies reported some interesting facts. On the positive side, 83% of organisations with wellness programs said that the cost savings as a result of the program more than covered the cost of implementing such a program. This shows that the wellness program was worthwhile.

However, a surprisingly large number of organisations did not measure the impact of the wellness programs. This is surprising given the large financial investment in many of these programs. Internal reporting should allow the organisation to measure the effectiveness of the program, or at the very least the wellness providers should provide their clients with an objective measure of the benefits of the program being implemented.

Organisations implementing a wellness program will do so for a reason; they generally have set objective which they want to achieve. In order to determine whether they have successfully achieved this objective, it is obviously important to be able to measure the performance of the program. This is something that the wellness provider should be able to assist with.

I hope your workplace wellness program is proving effective.