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Healthy Campus
If your institution is like most, your health care costs are increasing by double digits and your health care expenditures will double in the next five to eight years. Additionally, faculty and staff faced with health risks and chronic illness are less present and productive, which can result in lost productivity, lower levels of engagement in their work and increased costs to the institution.
As health care expenditures continue to rise and other initiatives fail to effectively manage these costs, institutions are being forced to make tough decisions about cutting programs and staff and faculty positions, or limiting academic initiatives. As a result, many higher education institutions now recognize that an investment in the health of their workforce is an investment in the economic and academic health of their institution.
What is a Healthy Campus Initiative?
A Healthy Campus Initiative creates a healthy environment for faculty, staff, students and dependents. That healthy environment reduces workforce costs and enables them to engage in their work and life more completely. It assists them with issues that may distract or prevent them from being engaged in their work because of health, personal (e.g., dependent, legal, financial, family) or work-related (e.g., inadequate tools and resources) issues. Greater engagement leads to improved retention, productivity, creativity and innovation in support of educational excellence, innovative research and effective community service.
Sibson has developed the Healthy Campus model to help higher education institutions create a healthy work environment for faculty, staff, students and dependents. Specifically, a healthy campus:
- Keeps healthy people healthy
- Helps unhealthy people change their behavior to be healthier
- Supports people who have more serious health issues
- Enables people to be more productive and satisfied in their work and life
What can a Healthy Campus Initiative do for your institution?
Ultimately, a Healthy Campus Initiative will help your institution:
- Better manage its health care and absence-related costs
- Enhance the productivity of its faculty and staff
- Improve the affiliation its facility and staff have with the institution, which can result in reduced turnover
While many campuses currently invest in various programs that can support a healthy campus initiative, these programs often go unnoticed and/or are underused because faculty and staff don’t know about them, don’t know how the programs interrelate or don’t know where to focus. Many institutions make it even more difficult and confusing for faculty and staff because the programs aren’t optimally designed, delivered and communicated. Our experience shows that various offerings must be orchestrated and focused on behavior change in order to optimize an institution’s return on the investment made in providing those programs.
Several published research studies demonstrate a return on investment in excess of 300% when a health improvement program is designed and implemented appropriately, with a reduction in health- and absence-related costs in excess of 25% for programs that have been in place longer than three years. Sibson’s Healthy Campus Survey has also found a relationship between certain practices and strategies and reduced health costs.
Take our 2009 Healthy Campus Survey to see if your institution could benefit from a Healthy Campus Initiative.
How do you begin a Healthy Campus Initiative?
Sibson consultants recommend the following process for creating a Healthy Campus:
Contact us today to learn how we can help you construct your own Healthy Campus Initiative.
Presentations
- Pursuing a Healthy Campus During Turbulent Times: The University of Tennessee Odyssey
CUPA-HR Tennessee Spring Conference, April 14, 2009, Knoxville, TN - Sustaining a Healthy Enterprise During Turbulent Times
HRMAC Total Rewards Interest Group Meeting, March 19, 2009, Chicago, IL - Creating a City of Health: The Duke Story
CUPA-HR National Annual Conference, October 10, 2008, St. Louis, MO - A Healthy Campus: The Healthy Purdue Story
NACUBO Annual Conference, July 15, 2008, Chicago, IL - A Healthy Enterprise, It is More then Just Wellness
Chicago Chapter DMEC Annual Conference, June 18, 2008, Chicago, IL - A Healthy Enterprise Yields Healthy Consumers
MBGH Annual Conference, May 1, 2008, Chicago, IL - A Healthy Campus: Michigan Healthy Community Story
CUPA-HR Midwest Spring Conference, March 18, 2008, Chicago, IL - Absence (Behavioral Health) Management Makes the Heart Grow Fonder
CUPA-HR Midwest Spring Conference, May 7, 2007, Madison, WI - Rewards of Work: Defining Employee Engagement for Impact
WorldatWork Total Rewards 2007 Conference, May 6, 2007, Orlando, FL - Why Workers Stay or Go: Defining Employee Engagement for Impact
CUPA-HR Illinois Spring Conference, April 7, 2007, Chicago, IL
