Corporate America Trims the Fat—Literally

By Morgan Cooper, with Lea Friese-Haben

With the decline in the economy, employers are forced to take a closer look at their workforce. One of the things they have to consider is employee health, a growing concern partly based on increasing health care costs.

So where will they “trim the fat?” Simple—by looking at employees that cost them money. Key elements of a 2006 study provided by Leade Health and titled “The Business Case for Weight/Obesity Management Using Health Coaching Interventions” focused on obesity-related diseases and their effects on the bottom line of businesses. Employee obesity is the number-one factor in productivity loss, and employees under scrutiny are those who are severely overweight.

In the study, it was determined that medical costs for obese employees are 77 percent higher than for those who maintain a healthy weight, and that obesity-related disabilities cost employers up to $8,720 per claimant a year. Additionally, obesity represents an estimated 43 percent of all health care spending for coronary heart disease, type II diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, stroke, gallbladder disease, osteoarthritis of the knee, and endometrial cancer.

If you’re overweight, and your employer is evaluating job performance, missed days due to illness, and work limitations, then your employment may be at risk. Let’s face it—obesity is a growing epidemic in our society. Out of all the countries in the world, America is ranked number one for its overweight population. 30.6 percent of the population in America aged 15 and above have a BMI greater than 30. By comparison, the lowest is Japan at 3.2 percent.

So what is feeding the obesity epidemic? Dr. Dave Johnson, bariatric surgeon for Arizona Weight Loss Solutions, states, “The way people eat has changed. Many families try to make food dollars stretch by loading up on carbs and not enough protein, fresh vegetables, and fruit. Portions are larger, and fast food is on every corner. Fresh-food meal preparation has decreased due to busy schedules. The most concerning ripple effect is the alarming rise of obesity and inactivity in our children.”

Dr. Johnson questions the effectiveness of popular fad diets, which he says fail when people go back to eating “normal food” and gain back the weight they lost and continue to gain. The dieters, he says, don’t learn through these diets how to make wise food choices.

So what can employers do to help build a stronger, leaner workforce? We talked with United Healthcare, one of the largest insurance providers in the United States. They said that an increasing number of companies are providing wellness programs to help educate their employees while offering the employees positive incentives to create a healthy workplace. One such program is called Vital Measures, and the incentive is simple: If you don’t smoke, maintain healthy cholesterol levels, keep your blood pressure down, and maintain a healthy body mass index (BMI) level that is proportional to your height and weight, you receive a credit on your deductible for each criterion met.

So where do we go from here? “Exercise, proper diet, nutrition, and behavioral education are the key to a person’s success with weight loss,” Dr. Johnson says. “Employers and employees need weight loss programs to mobilize their workforce and help them succeed in their efforts. Most insurance companies require a five-year weight history before bariatric [weight loss] surgery is approved. Because of this, we have added a medically supervised weight loss program for the people who do not qualify for weight loss surgery but still need to lose twenty to fifty pounds to get into that healthy weight range.”

To tip the scale in the right direction, America seriously needs to get moving, eat less, and eat more nutritious meals in order to trim the fat from its waistline. Don’t be a target—set a goal and get to your target weight instead.

To calculate your BMI, go to azwls.com.