Workplace Safety
Employee health and safety management
Most U.S. firms are offering disease management and health promotion programs to employees to address the increasing health care costs through improving employee lifestyle and overall health. Nevertheless, the U.S. has not been efficient in providing employees with integrated comprehensive health programs. Comprehensive programs of promoting employee health might encompass a series of strategies including supportive environments, health education, accessing support services, employee integration into organizational structures and frequent health screenings (O'Donnell, 2008).
Most companies operating in the U.S. have implemented enhancement and employee health programs with a primary focus on employee lifestyle management. Employees are encouraged to enroll in insurance programs, which give them regular health risk assessments (HRA) and a certificate of completion. HRA are regularly applied in the identification of health risks facing employees based on their current lifestyles and health status (Reniers, 2010). Employees are given credit incentives towards their health insurance premiums for the following year if they show low health risks. This credit is also awarded to employees who show interest in participating in recommended programs of improving health if they show moderate or high risks. Seventy percent of American employees have complied to the HRA programs with half of the population successfully completing additional programs of HRA. This has formed the primary basis of evaluating the impact of these programs across the United States of America (Pe-rezgonza-lez, 2007).
Based on the HRA programs, most employees in the U.S. have been enrolled and identified as eligible for lifestyle and health management programs. There are various health and lifestyle management programs: weight, smoking, blood pressure, pre-diabetes, and stress and cholesterol management. Most employees have shown great interest in cholesterol management programs while few of them have enrolled in pre-diabetes management programs. The lifestyle management programs entail online or personal coaching by a personal expert. It entails a series of months based on training and individual plan of action focusing on health risk reduction (Johnson & Stoskopf, 2010).
Besides the regular health management programs, companies in the U.S. have also adopted wellness and preventive physician and employee programs. These incentive programs have been giving quality points to physicians and their employees based on clinical evidence and prevention guidelines. Some program saving projects based on health related and medical cost saving productivity have been allocated to physicians and their employees based on quality points earned. These incentive programs based on quality points are still operational in the U.S. (Goldman, Corrada & Goldman, 2011).
Accumulating evidence shows that many companies in the U.S. have implemented advanced health enhancement initiatives by providing employees with opportunities to complete HRA programs. These companies are giving financial rewards and incentives to both participants and employees who have graduated from eligible HRA programs (O'Donnell, 2008). Companies are increasingly realizing the importance of advanced programs because they offer new significant components to the health and lifestyle management programs. These new programs include disease management and demand management. Looking at demand management, these programs offer a 24-hour help line for employee health advise and questions. All employees who successfully complete HRA programs are given automatic enrollment in demand management programs. Demand management programs are telephone-based availed to employees with more costly and compels medical conditions. Demand management programs encompass assigning employees to personal nurses, care management, coaching, care coordination, lifestyle management and health education with physicians dealing with employees. Currently, employees are being given joint health enhancement programs of lifestyle management, disease management, demand management and HRAs (Buckner & Koepp, 2009).
Safety, health and environmental management systems
Researchers have conducted both external and internal analysis to assess the impacts of lifestyle and health enhancement programs. Looking at the internal analysis, researchers compared outcomes of employees who experienced risk reduction or improvement vs. those who demonstrated increased or no improvement in health risks. In the external analysis, researchers compared outcomes between a controlled group and participating employees in describing the trend of benchmarking health risks across the United States (Pe-rezgonza-lez, 2007). Safety, health and environmental policy express the long-standing commitment to employee safety and environmental management. The policy seeks to ensure that companies in the U.S. are conducting their operations in a manner that is friendly to the environment. This creates a safe and healthy practices, as well as working environments enabling employees to work free from injury. In order for companies to accomplish this goal, the policy articulates that:
All companies operating in the U.S. must exceed or meet all legal requirements
Companies must be proactive...
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