Corporate Health and Wellness and the Financial Bottom Line

Abstract

Objective:The research objective was to test the hypothesis that corporate health and wellness contributed positively to South African companies’ financial results.Methods:The past share market performance of eligible healthy companies, based on Discovery's Healthy Company Index, was tracked under three investment scenarios and compared with the market performance on the basis of the JSE FTSE All Share Index.Results:The evidence supports the hypothesis that a culture of health and wellness provides a financial advantage, in so far as the portfolio of healthy companies consistently outperformed the market over the selected simulations.Conclusions:Given the limitations of the investigation, namely small sample size, the brevity of the period of investigation, and the reliance on accessibility sampling, the research provides the first and preliminary evidence supportive of the direct financial benefits of companies’ wellness programs.

A national study of the availability of law enforcement agency wellness programming for officers: A latent class analysis

“…Increasingly, organizations have been adopting wellness programs to improve employee functioning and health, and to control healthcare and absenteeism costs (Bly et al, 1986). The private sector has reported an annual return on investment in wellness programming as high as 432% (Conradie et al, 2016). However private companies (90%) are much more likely to offer wellness programming for their staff (Aldana et al, 2005) compared with only 50% of local governments (the employer of many LEOs) offering wellness programming (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2011).…”

Revisiting the Performance of Firms Recognized for Creating a Healthy Culture

“…Creating such equal-weight portfolios are analogous to what previous researchers have called the ''naı ¨ve 1/n heuristic'' since each firm is simply added in the same proportion as others. 6 Nevertheless, this represents a laudable outcome considering that very few actively managed mutual funds outperform this market index.…”

Connecting the Dots Between Health and Well-being, Business, Community, and Prosperity

“…They have a clear impact on business performance -and on the share price in the case of public companies -as well as on the bottom line. [22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] Between 2002 and 2008, Johnson & Johnson experienced a return of $2.71 for every dollar spent on employee health and well-being programs. 30 It is estimated that the return on investment (ROI) in comprehensive, well-run employee health and well-being programs can be as high as 6 to 1.…”

“…The portfolio of healthy companies consistently outperformed the market during three different simulations Figure 7 presents the information for the performance of an equal-weighted portfolio measured against the JSE FTSE ALSI over a 10-year period. 23…”