Does Your Business Need a Wellness Checkup?

1. Health Promotion and Employee Wellness Worksite Programs Every business with employees is experiencing health risks. Obesity, tobacco use and stress are the most common hazards to health in the American workforce. Education is necessary to teach employees the relationship between activity, diet and health and to demonstrate how this can be changed to encourage physical wellness. Just a simple health preventive program about eating healthy may make a big difference in your company's growth roadmap. Create a healthy employee newsletter and fill it with preventative health measures. Encourage your employees to find wellness issues that will improve the overall productivity of the business. A good example is the American Dietetic Association's website, <a href="http://www.eatright.org/">www.eatright.org</a> where you will find hundreds of new ideas for your employees to share in how to eat right and stay fit. 2. Human Services - Risk Prevention Let's explore your human services. Many small business owners with 1-10 employees manage their human services on their own, generally partnering with many different solution providers to find all the right answers to solve the greatest risks. This is not a bad idea; however the time and operating expense involved in that process may be costing you more than you think. A great outsourced solution is to partner with a PEO, Preferred Employer Organization. PEO's reduce risks in many human service areas such as payroll, benefits, retirement, government compliance, workers compensation. Check out the NAPEO website, <a href="http://www.napeo.org/">www.napeo.org</a> for a list of PEO companies and apply some human services prevention to your business. 3. Cash Flow Wellness Now let's talk about the health of your cash flow. Cash Flow is the lifeblood of your business. A positive cash flow is fun to talk about but what about those lurking challenges like "past due" accounts receivables. The words, "past due" or "debt" are unfriendly and full of fear. In order to take the right path to cash flow wellness you must first take a financial snapshot of your business, kind of like getting an x-ray. It is important for business owners to have a complete understanding of their income, profits, expenses, debt and liabilities. It is a good practice to provide your customers with payment terms; if you don't your competitor will! It is also a good practice to protect your payment terms. Aging receivables (60 days or older), or past due customer payments, are silent invasions of your cash flow health. These are the surprises that might destroy your business. The US Department of Commerce has studied the value of past due receivables and the results are not a good diagnosis. In fact, your profits that have aged to six months past due are only worth 30% of their original value. Don't let your customer decide when it is ok to pay you for your services or products: you decide. Partner with a collection agency who wants to help you strengthen your customer relationships, not alienate your customers. Be sure you also partner with a collection agency that abides by the Fair Debt Collections Practices Act (FDCPA). Collection agencies that offer early intervention and prevention not only reduce your bad debt but also reduce your operating costs. Take a look at a leader in early profit recovery <a href="http://www.transworldsystems.com/">www.transworldsystems.com</a>. Their solution has produced positive results for over 60,000 customers. 2009-03-20T18:18:15Z