Message to Corporate America: Hire and Promote the Best of the Pot
What better time than now for companies to create and promote policies that, all things being equal, favor those who practice lifestyles that improve the quality of life by hiring and promoting? Hewitt Associates projects that health care cost increases for employers in 2011 will be at the highest level in five years. In 2012, the increase will be 8.8 percent (compared to an increase of 6.9 percent in 2010 and 6.0 percent in 2009). According to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, “Health insurance grew at an average annual rate of 9.3 percent between 1970 and 2008.”
How many organizations can afford to ignore these realities? On average, there are 4.6 unemployed people competing for every job opening, according to government statistics. American businesses pay an average of $1,503 more a year for health coverage for “high-risk” workers.
Given economic conditions, the present is an opportune time to institute policies that REALLY provide incentives and educational wellness opportunities to improve opportunities for more employees and job seekers to practice healthy lifestyles. There are no fewer than 13.9 million Americans in this country looking for work; those who refuse to help their organizations by taking more care of themselves are not irreplaceable.
At a recent Tax Policy Symposium on “Health Care Reform and the A-Diagnosis of Corporate America,” the urgency of gaining control of the costs associated with employees’ negative health habits was made clear. Tony Holmes, partner and senior consultant at Mercer Health & Benefits LLC, a global provider of employer-sponsored benefits and health services, said, “One of the main reasons our costs are significantly higher is because over the past 10 to 15 years, people have become less healthy.
There is more that companies could and should do to reverse this trend and its unfortunate consequences. They can work with nonprofits in their communities to provide REAL wellness learning opportunities for the unemployed. This would be an important community service that would sometimes also identify people who have the skills that the sponsoring organization needs. However, the main beneficiary would be the unemployed. They would learn valuable life skills from this organizational outreach. All companies with wellness programs could make some contribution in this regard. They could sponsor some learning sessions on wellness skill areas for citizen job seekers. The latter would not only have the opportunity to learn valuable personal mental and physical lessons, but could also gain insight into the kind of fundamental cultural wellness goals that Judd Allen and other wellness leaders have championed. These include learning to enlist the support of family, friends, and the community for benefits such as healthy fun, reaching your full potential, expressing mutual respect, and supporting self-care. Among many methods, these company outreach teaching tools can include wellness self-assessments related to economic, social, emotional/spiritual, and physical well-being. Surely all of this would improve job prospects for job seekers just as much as learning the right skills that companies need. All companies want to employ workers who are not a cost burden to their benefit plans.
Basically, it might be time to incorporate into the meaning of “fit for work” a consideration like “fit to maintain an active and healthy lifestyle.” .
The high cost of illness is convincingly documented by studies of corporate wellness programs. Healthy employees are increasingly considered essential to profitability. Employees who smoke, abuse alcohol, do not get enough exercise, etc., are a financial burden. On the other hand, employees who practice healthy lifestyles are active, saving companies substantial sums. These funds can be put to more profitable uses than paying exorbitant health insurance premiums and other costs (absenteeism, lack of energy) related to illnesses that, in many cases, could have been prevented by more conscious lifestyle choices.
What position do you suppose the Republican Tea Baggers will take on this idea? How about the Democrats? Would such active support and encouragement of REAL wellness lifestyle habits in recruitment, promotion and extracurricular education be viewed favorably or not by various lobby groups? Would the right consider such selection criteria in hiring and promotion as part of an overregulated, big government, liberal socialist agenda? Or, quite the contrary, would the left see the initiative as the triumph of a reactionary fascist extremist policy? Might some see it as a case where the richest bigwigs in the mega-corporations are pushing the little people to increase their grotesque profit margins?
I have no idea, but the political consequences seem irrelevant. Everyone who cares about employees and promotes opportunities for everyone to share a fair chance at a good and healthy life should come up with their best ideas, regardless of such considerations. Let elected officials support or oppose such plans, and face public consequences for doing the right thing or otherwise. Wellness advocates and company leaders need to be more concerned with presenting what appears to be in the interest of both business and social well-being.
It is unfortunate that extreme interpretations are the norm in the current era of political positioning on one side or the other on so many issues. Proposals for change put forward by the other side are typically viewed by one side as a malevolent power grab and/or abuse of the rich or the poor, and/or the embattled middle classes.
Personally, I believe that if you want to be hired by a company that values the well-being of its people, you must be able to demonstrate that you are committed to a healthy lifestyle.
More than a decade ago, an enterprising human resources recruiter working for a large university published an ad consistent with this idea of hiring and promoting healthy, wellness-oriented people. The ad stated, “Earned a Ph.D. in Public Health or Health Promotion, evidence of academic productivity, and a wellness lifestyle that reflects the philosophy of the program.”
Who would question that? A call for wellness-oriented candidates for a wellness-oriented job. Would you expect a sedentary smoker with an attitude to be a good candidate for this position? Of course not.
Several health professionals wrote to me at the time, asking if I had any objections to ads like this. I replied that the question being asked reminded me of a parable about an American who visited Spain during the Franco regime (described in a Wall Street Journal editorial on 6/30/98, p. A18). The Yankee wanted to know what the Spanish thought about the dictator, so he asked a man in Madrid and he was quickly driven in three different cars to an isolated lake and then in a rowboat to the middle of the lake, where the Spaniard watched around to make sure no one was looking and whispered in the American’s ear, “I like it.”
I liked the ad! For all I know, he may have planted the idea for this proposal. Since I don’t live in a totalitarian country or work at a politically correct university, I can speak my mind without having to insist on going out into the middle of a lake to do so.
The ad was not draconian in any way. He did not suggest that the University would NOT hire someone less than perfect in lifestyle attitudes and behaviors. The University seemed to be suggesting that it valued the welfare of employees and would like candidates who share that interest.
Of course, I want a program that goes much further. I want to see employers INSIST ON such a qualification! I would also like to see more information in the announcements about the nature of wellness in the workplace. More on what the employer has in mind regarding the nature of a candidate’s lifestyle! What a splendid public service such job requirements would represent if they were combined with detailed descriptions of various aspects of REAL welfare. Such ads could even represent educational wellness campaigns.
What might happen if more employers identified a wellness lifestyle as a desired quality for successful candidates and hired them accordingly? Here are some possibilities:
* A flurry of demands from unions and others that, if successful, would limit innovation, creativity, constructive change and a bold initiative for a healthier workforce.
* More interest in finding out what a REAL wellness lifestyle is all about.
* Greater efforts by job candidates to investigate, if not dabble in, those lifestyles, if only to improve their chances of getting jobs that require them. Remember, doing the right thing for the wrong reasons is still progress.
* More serious commitments and ambitious initiatives to test whether or not this wellness lifestyle idea pays off.
* Increased participation in various wellness lifestyle programs.
* More people who fight to maintain and improve the quality of their lifestyles, and succeed.
* Better health, fewer diseases, more satisfaction with life and greater success in achieving goals.
Perhaps corporate leaders in wellness-oriented workplaces will support this type of initiative. Everyone must realize that a wellness commitment does not mean total abstinence from all bad habits, or the absence of physical or other disabilities, or anything that would rule out or disadvantage those with more lifestyle qualities. beyond your control.
If I were the CEO of a company, I would send out a candidate announcement similar to the one mentioned above. However, I would expand on the University announcement quoted and suggest that candidates are also expected to have a sense of humor.
This kind of wellness marketing could be accomplished by substituting the usual phrase about “an affirmative action employer” (read, “white males will be excluded, other factors being more or less equal”) in favor of the delicious consignment that mocks all discrimination. . . The best example I can think of was seen in the movie “Life is beautiful”, namely “No spiders or visigoths allowed”.
In addition to a sense of humor, I would like to add sex to the ad. After all, sex sells: it attracts everyone, including those who claim or act as if they are against it or that it is a sin unless it is done in a way that meets with ecclesiastical approval, which varies across religions. (Jehovah’s Witness sex is not the same as Amish sex, and the latter varies from Taliban-approved sex, and so on.)
In any case, REALLY wellness-oriented employee ads should, like the lifestyle itself, be compelling, engaging, intriguing, and engaging. For starters.
What is your opinion on my idea of hiring and promoting the well of the well?
