Health Promotion Programs - Research Paper Example

Health Promotion Programs Introduction Health promotion programs are aimed at benefiting both the employers and employees. A successful program is supposed to integrate organizational as well as individual strategies to ensure that it is successful in benefiting the employees and the organization as well as to the employees. The programs offer primary as well as secondary prevention to health issues. It provides a security towards health safety risks in the environment of work and reduces the risk towards diseases and injury. The employees are able to develop skills for self-management, development of networks of social support for the employees with other employees and with their families. From the employees’ perspective, it is a form of investment made on their behalf by the organizations that they work for. It gives individuals an opportunity to make informed health decisions about themselves. Employers benefit from the programs from the fact that employees are able to work more productively, reduction of costs associated with issues such as absenteeism of the employees and insurance compensation for workers. It is also applied when recruiting new and highly skilled employees. It also helps to improve the corporate image in the face of the public. It shows that the organization is concerned with the benefits of the community in which it operates since the employees are part of that community. The financial benefits derived from the programs therefore is a topic of concern to both the professionals of health promotion as well as to the human resource (Fertman & Allensworth 2010). Financial benefits from the program Over the years, the aim for health promotion programs has to benefit and offer health security to the employees of organizations. Implementation of any program in the organization requires a prior assessment of the costs and benefits that are to be derived from the particular program or project. However, the involved organization may derive some benefits from offering the program to the employees and these benefits range from improved productivity of the employees to reduction in costs associated with health care. It is a way of organizational participation in maintaining the welfare and wellbeing of its employees in the workplace. Preventing illness in the employees is a goal of primary prevention whereby the employees are made aware of the measures that they need to take to prevent accidents and diseases. Creating health awareness to the employees is also a focus for these programs. Health promotion program is therefore the responsibility of the human resource department in organizations considering that it focuses on the employees who are the human resource. The department is involved in making the right decisions concerning the program and also making decisions concerning the required policies and programs for implementation. There are costs that are involved in implementing these programs, which necessitates the need for considering the financial as well as economic benefits that the organizations derive from these programs (Buchbinder et al 2014). Organizations have focused over the years on not only the health benefits derived by employees from these programs but also on the question of whether these programs have the ability of saving money for the organization. There is a great concern of whether the programs have the ability of resulting to a positive rate of return. There has been evidence therefore that if the right investment in these programs is made, ensuring the right implementation, that efficient medical cost saving is attained from their implementation and that they are able to result to a positive return on investment. This is from the consideration that preventing health issues will always require less cost compared to treating the resulting disease. The organization therefore will save cost by investing in the health promotion program. The return on investment for the well-managed health programs has been observed to have a varying range depending on the type of program implemented. Organizations have made measure the return on investment against the amount spent on implementing these programs. The range for the return on investment has over the years observed to range from 1.40 to 13 dollars per dollar spending on the program. The range in the values is observed from the different programs used by the involved organizations. The result of a positive return on investment is attributed to the cost saving that organizations attain from using implementing the programs. Many human resource departments have recorded a reduction in the level of employees’ absenteeism on implementation of these programs. This is because there are reduced cases of employees failing to report to work die to reasons of seeking health care, which would otherwise require organizations to find alternatives on how the duties supposed to be performed by the absent employees should be performed. The reduction in absenteeism cost therefore further increases the productivity of employees in their work thus increasing the returns attained by the organizations (Institute of Medicine 2003). The organization on implementation of health promotion programs reduces the risk of employees to diseases and thus further reducing the costs that are associated with seeking health care by the employees. This therefore contributes to the benefits that the organizations derive from investing in health promotion programs that are intended to benefit the employees. Many researchers have evidenced the huge amounts of cost savings derived from the programs that different organizations implement and thus indicating their financial benefits to the organizations. Many of the organization therefore have discovered the cost effectiveness of the programs and have advocated for an investment in these programs. The social efficacy factor is also derived from implementation of the programs and this aid in building the corporate image of the involved organization giving an indication to the public that the organization is socially responsible and that it advocates for the welfare of the community in which it operates. The organization is therefore able to obtain and recruit highly skilled employees out of the public positive perception and this sums up to increased productivity of the organization, which is measured in financial benefit of the organization. This is because the organization is able to attain a positive return on investment (Cyr, 2003). Some organizations fear the cost involved by their human resources departments in implementing the programs. However in consideration of every aspect involved, the benefits attained from implementing these programs are in many cases worth to cover for the cost that is incurred in the implementation. Health promotion programs are therefore economically and financially worth implementing Maurer & Smith, 2013). Barriers and obstacles in implementing the programs There are various barriers and obstacles encountered when organizations are implementing health promotion programs. These barriers may make the implementation process for the program difficult and these may be such as the cost of implementation of the programs, resistance by the employees, and lack of skilled personnel for involvement in the implementation (ODonnell, 2002). Another barrier encountered in the implementation is the difference in the priority of interests for the parties involved in the implementation as well as lack of proper communication. The implementation process for the desired program requires investment in terms of finances and this may be a barrier if the organization lacks the financial ability to cater for the cost of implementing the program. Health promotion program is a long-term program involving the employees and involving a long-term investment. In addition, it needs continued funding into the future and therefore this will be a limiting factor to the organization. The implementation will also require more finds to cater for the expenses additional costs involved in overseeing the implementation and the success of the program. The organization may not be in a position to cater for all the costs that will be needed in implementation and this will result to failure in implementation and the organization will end up failing in implementing this program (Bartholomew, 2011). Resistance by the employees is another barrier that will hinder efficient implementation of the program. The employees may be resistant to changing their lifestyles that might be termed to be unhealthy. They may fail to disclose the information needed, feeling that their employers are too much enquiring into their private lives. This may result to them resisting to adhere to the changes required and thus causing difficulties in the process of implementing the program since successful implementation requires cooperation of both the employers and the employees. Another barrier is lack of proper personnel to be involved in the implementation process. In this case, the organization may lack the personnel required in the implementation of the intended program (Johnson & Breckon, 2007). The implementation may necessitate the need for a certain skill that the organization might lack thus limiting its implementation ability. The organization might lack the personnel who possess the knowledge of what the intended health promotion program entails, and thus not being able to implement effectively. It may therefore end up incurring extra cost in order to hire or outsource the required personnel and it might lack the required finances to do so. Outsourcing these skills or hiring an outsider to provide the service might still have a negative implication in that it may lead to the exposure of the information concerning the employees of the organization and other crucial information concerning the organization to outsiders. Lack of the proper personnel for implementation process is therefore an obstacle that may hinder the organization from successfully implementing the desired health promotion program (Healey & Zimmerman 2010). For the efficient and effective implementation, of the health promotion program, effective communication need to be conducted between the people involved in the implementation as well as those whom the program concerns. Effective communication therefore will be required between the implementers and the employees in the organization. Lack of effective communication between these parties therefore will hinder the effectiveness of the implementation. The implementers need to engage the employees by informing them of all the details in all the steps and stages of the implementation process and also involving them by listening to their views and suggestions. This will ensure that employees recognize the need of the whole process and will give them the reason to feel the need for participating. The absence of this communication therefore will be an obstacle in achieving a successful and effective implementation (Valente, 2002). Another barrier to implementing an effective health promotion program is the difference in the priority of interests in different parties involved in the implementation process. Successful implementation will require the parties involved to come up with a common goal and interests in the program. An obstacle will thus arise and will hinder the implementation if the parties cannot come up with the common goal and interest to oversee the implementation of the program resulting to disagreements between the parties. The implementers may possess their own interests that might be different from those of the other parties that are involved and if these interests are not resolved, the implementation process might end up being unsuccessful. Successful implementation will only be attained if only the differences in interests are resolved and a common interest attained between the parties (Buchbinder et al., 2014). Conclusion Health promotion programs are aimed at benefiting the workers or employees of the involved organization. They offer security and preventive measures to instances of problems associated with health and advocating for healthy lifestyles and standards of living as well as ensuring an access to health care and services. They aim at ensuring that individuals are healthy in organizations, workplaces as well as in the entire community and therefore enabling all individuals to make informed health decisions. They determine the prevention strategies, conditions required for healthy living, reducing health risks and preventing the risk conditions for diseases. Organizations however have a reason for investing in these programs other than just benefiting the employees. The programs have a cost saving benefits to the employees in that they enable them to save on costs that would have occurred due to employees’ absenteeism and other costs of seeking health care. Another benefit to the organization is that the employees are able to work productively thus contributing to the organizational benefit. These result to the organization attaining a positive return on investment. The implementation for the programs has also been observed to be faced with barriers, which are resolved by their corrective measures. References: Fertman, C. I., & Allensworth, D. D. M. (2010). Health promotion programs: From theory to practice. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Maurer, F. A., & Smith, C. M. (2013). Community/public health nursing practice: Health for families and populations. St. Louis, Mo: Elsevier/Saunders. Institute of Medicine (U.S.). (2003). The future of the publics health in the 21st century. Washington, D.C: National Academies Press. Cyr, N. M. (2003). Health promotion, disease prevention, and exercise epidemiology. Dallas: University Press of America. Top of Form ODonnell, M. P. (2002). Health promotion in the workplace. Albany: Delmar Thomson Learning.Top of Form Bartholomew, L. K. (2011). Planning health promotion programs: An intervention mapping approach. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Johnson, J. A., Breckon, D. J., & Breckon, D. J. (2007). Managing health education and promotion programs: Leadership skills for the 21st century. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Healey, B. J., & Zimmerman, R. S. (2010). The new world of health promotion: New program development, implementation, and evaluation. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Valente, T. W. (2002). Evaluating health promotion programs. New York: Oxford University Press. Buchbinder, S. B., Shanks, N. H., & Buchbinder, D. (2014). Cases in health care management. Sudbury, Mass: Jones & Bartlett Learning. Bottom of Form Bottom of Form Read More