Don’t make wellness a budget casualty

By Connie Roethel , for SBT Published October 17, 2008

As the economy tightens, America’s small businesses are struggling with ways to respond to today’s market conditions. In a recent Milwaukee Biz Blog, Steve Jagler, executive editor of Small Business Times, referenced a new poll of 516 small-business owners across the United States conducted by management consulting firm George S. May International. In the survey, American small-business owners ranked the following issues as the most important to them: the economy (23 percent); health care (20 percent); taxes (17 percent); the Iraq war (15 percent); energy (12 percent); housing (7 percent); and immigration (5 percent).

With health care ranked as the second-highest concern and, for many employers the second-highest cost, it seems imperative that efforts to keep the workforce healthy and productive should continue, despite serious concerns about credit, budgets and cash flow.

In years past, doing wellness programs on nominal budgets and sometimes at no cost was common. Staff and practitioners got by on minimal dollars, health fairs, creativity and free community programs.

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