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"Team Up" With Wellness
"Teambuilding" is such a positive activity
that it has become a corporate buzzword
And, for good reason - we associate it with
benefits such as: Group skills, better
communication, improved productivity,
motivation, education and contribution to
common goals. Now, add wellness to that list.
Organizations incorporating teambuilding into
their employee development goals have found
significant benefits through improved moral
and leadership skills, improved processes and
procedures, improved organizational
productivity, and improved problem-solving
skills. Yet for many employees, the
teambuilding framework is only available to
upper level management. By making "wellness"
a teambuilding activity every employee has
the option to be an active participant-and
the benefits to the organization expand
exponentially.
A teambuilding program such as The LoneStart
Wellness Team Esteem Challenge lets
organizations offer a powerful team
experience to all employees. At the same time
the employees benefit from developing team
building - and new wellness skills, the
organizations are building their human
capital and creating a new culture of wellness.
As with all teambuilding, motivation is key.
This means for the teambuilding activity to
be successful, it needs to include those
factors that influence motivation:
A team whose members are aligned with a
common purpose (such as sustainable wellness
and building a culture of wellness within
their organization), feel challenged by their
task-and challenge is motivational. The team
takes on responsibility for the outcome,
experiences growth, (both as a team and in
their personal lives), and with encouragement
and ongoing support, tends to sustain its
motivation.
The benefits of teambuilding are significant.
The benefits of wellness are significant -
and far-reaching. The ability to do both at
once - momentous.
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Our Five Cents Worth
Heading into the middle of the summer of
2009, there's a lot more heating up than just
the thermometer.
As we mentioned in the first article of this
newsletter, the debate about Health Care
Reform is also getting pretty hot and it's
about to get a whole lot hotter. The Senate
health committee is meeting daily in order to
hammer out a comprehensive health care reform
bill that will ensure that every American has
access to affordable, quality health care -
and accomplish this while holding down costs.
Sounds good so far. Now, exactly how do we
actually make this happen?
We're hearing that many of the anticipated
cost savings will come from a new emphasis on
disease prevention and public health. Just
about everyone agrees that if we are going to
create a sustainable Culture of Wellness in
our country, we will need to move from sick
care to health care. Right now about 95 cents
out of every health care dollar goes to
treating illness after it occurs. That only
leaves us 5 cents, one nickel for prevention.
Here's the good news: We can do a lot with
that nickel. We've known for some time that
for every one of those nickels that we spend
on well-planned employee and community
wellness initiatives, we're getting as much
as 30 cents of cost savings in return.
That's an R.O.I. of 6 to 1. And that doesn't
factor in other proven benefits including
increased productivity and engagement,
reduced absenteeism and presenteeism and
long-term economic development. A five cent
investment that results in a 30 cent savings
may not excite a lot of interest - until we
do the math. Investing 5 cents of each of
the 2.5 trillion dollars we'll spend on
health care this year (a modest $125 billion)
will save us $750 billion of the
who-knows-how-many trillion dollars we'll
spend next year.
But there's a catch. And it's a big one. In
order to make this happen, our "health care
nickel" must be spent first, before we start
burning through the rest of our "sick care
dollar." And we all know that, as of right
now, the system doesn't work that way. But
maybe it can. Next Month: Paying Ourselves
First.
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Help us be sure this e-mail newsletter isn't filtered as spam. Please add our return address (information@lonestartnow.com) to your address book. That may 'whitelist' us with your filter-and ensure that future issues get through. Thanks! If your organization is ready to take responsibility for promoting healthy lifestyles and a healthy work environment, LoneStart is an effective, low-cost and easy-to-administer employee wellness program, which functions equally well as a stand-alone initiative or as a high-impact jump-start to existing or proposed employee wellness strategies. Contact us today to find out how the LoneStart Wellness Initiative will change your workplace. Please share Wellness in the Workplace with colleagues. Please forward this newsletter to friends and associates who will benefit from a workplace wellness strategy such as the LoneStart Wellness Initiative.
A Challenge. An Opportunity. A Solution.
The LoneStart Wellness Initiative
email:
information@lonestartnow.com
phone:
512.894.3440
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