Ivy Hartman: Providing health care cost our concern for most small business owners. But sbtv.com health and wellness experts Dr. Bob Hoffman and Dr. Jason Deitch are co-authors of this book, “Discover Wellness: How Staying Healthy Can Make You Rich”. Our guest today and they have tips on increasing health benefits while you decrease your cost. As you mentioned also earlier wellness for you employees can mean a striving business or wellness in your business as well.
So what are some strategies small firms can do to do implement or improve their employee’s health benefits aside from providing health insurance?
Dr. Bob Hoffman: Well I think one of the most important things is education it’s learning how to educate yourself and your employees and your key employees on what health and wellness is and you know what you need to do to become a better version of yourself, and become more productive relative to your health. You know its one of the services that we provide we have educational systems, where we come in and we bring in guest lecturers on a variety of subjects and topics. Obviously, we recommend things like having you and your employees read this book, it’s doing internet research is just immersing yourself into knowing more.
The more you know the faster you go. It’s really very simple and we want people to become specially the opinion leaders, specially the leaders, the owners of businesses, small business can become far more educated so that they can empower their work force.
Ivy Hartman: Part of this education maybe the spelling misconception something like I said at the beginning providing health insurance is a benefit to your employee. Well, certainly it’s a benefit but, what you're saying is “Hey, you know what lets just make it cost savings too that employees wont need their health insurance by providing, promoting wellness”.
Dr. Jason Deitch: It’s really the best thing that they can do and it’s a common misconception that increasing benefits means to increase people’s access to more drugs and more surgery. The fact to the matter is that a true health benefit is something that provides them greater access to more health promoting activities and more health promoting education. So if people can be inspired and incentivized to actually make better decisions so that they can do the right thing and in fact avoid the medical system all together and it’s the best way you can possibly reduce medical cost and increase productivity at the same time.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: You know better health does better chemistry has not worked out very well.
Ivy Hartman: I know.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: And we need to have a better belief system and a better action staff like better health through better living. And in order to do that you have to know what you should be doing and what you should be avoiding. What foods to eat, what foods to avoid, what exercises are good and which ones are going to injure you. You know what kinds of activities everybody should be doing to improve their health and that’s why custom tailoring on consulting approach is a smart step. Its all part of this educational processes and what we have found is that the more educated people become the better decisions they make. The better actions they take the more consistent and persistent they are with their actions and the end result is far better results, far less expense, far more productivity.
Ivy Hartman: Wonderful suggestions that you guys actually have in book from what I've read you have great tips on exercise you can do right there at your work station. With your chair, using just stretching techniques and things like that that can be rejuvenating for an employee. But also it’s a very simple easy to follow book and Michael Gerber who is featured on sbtv.com gave a great quote here on the book it said “This is the most important subject to anyone can read and learn about this time”, this sensation of book covers it all beautifully done and wonderfully written, enjoy.
And it keeps it simple but yet because I think when you talked about education and information. That can seem daunting in enough of itself.
Dr. Jason Deitch: You know in fact many employers especially small employers, but also large ones are using the book as their wellness program. It’s a real very simple first step that they can literally just purchase bulk copies for all of their employees, encourage their employees to read it summer in fact creating kind of book club so that this is social community aspect to it and let other employees inside the group, perhaps provide food or do it lunch time or something like that to create a social component to all of this by give them the tools so that they can make the right choices and this really simplifies and clarifies all of it.
Ivy Hartman: Do you have any tips on how small business owners can make sure and ensure that a new program or an existing program or what can be effective and worth.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: Yeah, to incentivized their employees to take action. And to live by example but incentivize in your employees sometimes requires cash and sometimes its time off from work. Sometimes it’s bringing in lunch for them, sometimes its gift certificates to the local movie theater or to a dinner, or whatever its rewarding the behavior you want. So first in this process you got to know what you want. But before you can know what you want you got to be educated about what's out there, what are the possibilities and what best serves my company.
And once we get to that level, the next steps are relatively simple. We recommend for a lot of companies the first step after education is doing a health assessment on online assessment that everybody in the company takes. So that we can get snapshot, a picture of the health caution of this particular company.
What's the mean weight, what's the mean cholesterol, what the mean blood pressure, who’s exercising, what percentage are doing it, what percentage are on a diet and things of that nature. What percentage are going to a disease and what percentage are getting a massage, and what percentage have a form of stress management and as we see that it becomes unbelievably clear and easy to put a program into effect very simple or very extreme depending upon your needs to absolutely drive down your cause and drive up your productivity.
Ivy Hartman: I love that, I love that you’ve said that and you guys actually are experts then they will provide you with step by step instructions and how you can take action and actually make this available to your employees and start right now. And you can go to their website, its DiscoverWellnessCenter.com or as we’ve said ones and I would say it twice and we’ll say it, pick up Discover Wellness the book how staying healthy can make you rich and will make you rich. And we talked about riches in the sense not only economically but also the wealth and the riches of your life that you're living a healthy life, thank you gentleman for being on the show today.
Dr. Jason Deitch: Thank you for having us.
Dr. Bob Hoffman: Thank you so much.
Ivy Hartman: You're welcome; keep it right here on sbtv.com where small business is our only business.
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