Employee Wellness in Corporate Annual Reports — It’s Time!

By Leslie Nolen, Radial

Isn’t it odd that publicly-traded companies don’t report on employee wellness in their annual reports?

The precedent for reporting this kind of information is strong, and it offers numerous benefits:

1) Better-informed investors

If you own — or you’re thinking about buying — shares in that high-flying tech start-up, wouldn’t you want to know that the CEO or another key employee, like the head of product development, has a slew of health issues?

If you’re an investor in a large manufacturer, wouldn’t you like to know the details behind the health cost increases that management keeps blaming for poor bottom-line performance? And the actions that management’s taking to mitigate this business risk? After all, health costs are one of the single largest items on most P&Ls these days.

2) Greater corporate wellness accountability

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3) Strategic alignment of employer goals and actions

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4) Better alignment of corporate wellness with best practices

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5) Greater comparability

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Who will lead?

There’s a wonderful opportunity here for corporate wellness providers to jointly develop and propose model language and the model report elements appropriate for inclusion in an annual report.

The need is real. The Vitality Institute has proposed just this action, and they’re spot-on. Who else among our industry will rise to the challenge of leading this effort?