Health risk assessment

Every year, injuries and poor health cost businesses thousands of hours of lost work. An employee who does not take care of his own personal health is not just hurting himself. He can be hurting you as well. Like it or not, your business will be required to take care of him when his health fails and he ends up on disability.

Health risk assessment is one of the best ways to remedy this deplorable situation. Not only do wellness incentives work to cut the risks to your business, but they also help your employees stay healthier, longer. Although some people find health risk assessments to be intrusive, unfair, and micro-managerial, nevertheless they are good for both management and employees. Never has so simple a development done so much to keep productivity at a high level.

Basically health risk assessment works by keeping track of a number of factors for each employee. A good health risk assessment will keep track of whether the employee exercises, whether or not he is obese, whether or not he eats well, and whether or not he smokes or abuses alcohol. Then, the hazard risk assessment software will assign him a score. This score will indicate how likely he is to stay healthy. The score changes based on the employees age, and other factors.

Of course, what you do with the score depends on your company's policies. I have actually seen many companies that will determine a health risk assessment score and let it sit. They do nothing with it at all! Others take a more proactive approach. They give what are called wellness incentives. Wellness incentives are bonuses for anyone who lowers their health risk assessment. You can lower these scores by exercising frequently, eating well, losing weight, and maintaining a healthily lifestyle.

Other people take a more negative approach and punish employees with bad health risk assessments. I have even heard of some employees being fired because they will not, or can not, do enough to lower their health risk assessments. Personally, I think this is unfair but I understand the reason it is done. When you are hired for a job, you more or less belong to that company. You may have some freedom in your personal life, but not if that freedom places your boss in economic jeopardy. If you keep a bad health risk assessment score, you are not only hurting yourself, but your boss. Why shouldn't you lose your job for that? It seems like reckless behavior to me!

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