HR Strategies for Employee Engagement (Collection), Second Edition

Chapter 5. Employee Health, Wellness, and Welfare

We often think of vital human capital decisions being made by business leaders and their HR colleagues, but some of the most important talent decisions in every organization are made by employees themselves. Employee decisions that affect their health and wellness have profound effects that are often overlooked. This chapter shows how to capture and evaluate these effects.

In 2009, Steve Burd, CEO of the U.S. supermarket chain Safeway, took eight trips to speak to U.S. politicians about reforming the health-care system. Safeway’s health-care costs had been rising 10 percent per year for several years prior to 2004, but since then the company had kept health-care costs flat, compared to a 40 ...