Health care is increasingly helping shape business success or failure. The best way for organizations to realize the total economic value of health, well-being and optimal employee engagement is to execute a three-pronged healthy achievement strategy featuring a competitive benefits package, employee accountability and health-risk management.

The way health benefits are administered causes employees to view coverage as an entitlement, and thus disengage from the process of deciding their best course of work-life balance achievement.

There are inextricable links between health, well-being and employee engagement. Employee health and total well-being begin with a personal dedication to a balanced life that includes successful work and life fulfillment components. Optimal employee engagement evolves when an employer creates a meaningful and emotionally enriching work experience that fosters personal accountability, engagement, health improvement and balance. The result is a worksite where employees are able to balance their individual needs and are motivated to contribute time and energy to their job.

Employers are advised to promote strategic achievement initiatives that integrate employee accountability and engagement with a corporate culture of health. To ensure rapid business growth, maximized profits and lasting success, organizations must not only offer a competitive benefits package aligned to a culture of health, but also provide documented measures of success that can be administered in a cost-effective manner. The two other approaches that need to be factored into the equation include promoting employee accountability and engagement, as well as managing employee health risks.

The most critical challenge is to control employee health care costs while also fostering a sense of personal responsibility. Employers are urged to redesign their health benefit programs and employee engagement strategies to better serve corporate priorities. Only then can Corporate America really begin to recover its annual employee benefits investment and reap meaningful healthy dividends to power business growth.

Les C. Meyer
CEO
HPI Advisors, LLC
Denver, Colo.