In America, we have some serious time struggles. Everyone we know is busy. Everyone we know is running just to keep up with the day to day routine. No matter who you are or what you are doing in life, you are very busy.
Business is no different. Being busy is the key to a successful business. You've heard the phrase; "busy is good." You've heard the boss say to "get busy". It's all part of our culture and we have perfected the art of being busy. We are busy at home and we are busy at work.
That makes health difficult for most employees. With time being a stress in itself, it is a challenge to get exercise in or take time to make good food choices. That is what most employees struggle with at the core. That is also why the health of our workforce in our country is on the decline.
The workforce is just a mirror of our overall population. When you hear a statistic about obesity, it also applies to the workforce. When you hear a statistic about disease, it also applies to the workforce. Anything health-related that can be said about the American public, can also be said about the workforce in businesses around the country.
As a business, you are hiring people from the general population, so naturally, you can expect the issues to be similar. More accurately, you can expect attitudes to be the same in your workforce as they are in the general population. That is one of the biggest issues when it comes to time. Time is something that we have decided is optional.
When it comes to health, time is not optional. If you don't have time for health, you don't have health. When your company decides to change the culture and make health a part of it, time is part of the equation. If your company has time for health, you can help employees realize that they have time for it too. If your company doesn't have time for health, your company won't have health. Instead, you will simply have a workforce that don't have time for health and a company that actually supports that attitude.
That is the first step in creating a healthy company culture. When you are thinking about resources to devote to wellness, time is the first one that you have to make part of the equation. In order to create a plan, you have to take the time to discuss your company goals. If you want to create a particular result of any kind, you have to take the time to determine your actions that will lead to those results.
Your company is no stranger to this. Every company realizes that time is important to any area of business. That is why you make time for training. It is also why businesses make time for sales. Time is at the core of all areas of a successful business. The parts of the business that need to be supported are given the time. Likewise, the parts of the business that are given time are supported.
This support leads to success. When something is given time in your business, it becomes a growing area that is eventually a strength. When something is pushed aside and not given time, there is no way that this growth can take place. That is why so many companies struggle with wellness. When you devote time to wellness, there is growth. When your company doesn't have time for wellness, there is only the same results that you are already getting.
When you make wellness optional, your company will only invest as much time as you can spare. When you make wellness optional for employees, they will do the same. That is why health is going in the direction that it is going today. Health is something that none of us have time for. When your company supports that, you are promoting it and encouraging employees to continue down the same path, leading to the same results.
This raises a few questions:
How much time is your company devoting to wellness now?
That is a question that I would like to pose to all businesses across the country. The question that would follow directly would be: What results is your company getting now? What does your employee health look like now? What is the trend that you are seeing over the past 5 years, 10 years or 15 years? These questions are not difficult to answer. Every company knows exactly how much time they have spent on their wellness programs. Every company knows how much time they have invested in their employees in all areas. Health is no different. Every company knows how much time has been invested in employee health.
The questions posed are not pointed. They are not meant to insult any business or shame them for time they have spent or not spent on any particular area. When it comes to health, the fact remains, employees are not investing enough time in themselves. When it comes to employee health, many companies are still not investing time in their employees.
If your business wants to get control of healthcare costs and improve health, wellness is not optional. Time is finite, so there is only so much time in everyone's schedule. That is not a mystery. What is a mystery is how people can spend no time on something until there is an emergency and they are forced to spend the time. Medical emergencies are a clear example for both employees and companies. When someone hits the ultimate wall, there is no choice but to take the time to fix the problem.
Avoiding the problem is actually going to take less time and by far less painful. For employees and companies, health and wellness is nothing more than avoiding the problem by taking a little time now and saving a lot of time later. More importantly, we are able to save a lot of money by investing a little money. In business, saving money and saving time are not optional. If you don't strive to do these things, you will not be successful. If you are able to focus investment, you will get results.
Health is simple. Employee health is the same thing as health for the general population. If your company can devote time to wellness, you can avoid what is happening in the general population. How can you do this? You can create your own culture and with it, your own trends. One of those trends has to be health and more importantly that time for health is not optional.
Making time for health is not easy, but if it isn't done, we know what will happen. The fact is, we need to invest our time in ourselves and in our employees in order to improve health and in order to improve business. The state of affairs now has us dealing with rising costs. These costs are due to the choice to ignore health and to make improving it optional. The key to improving health and getting cost in line is time. When health is the goal, time is a necessity. When health is the goal time for health is not optional.
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