Today was our City Employee Health and Benefit Fair. It is the day when we provide preventative health screenings (weight, cholesterol, etc.) to employees in exchange for providing them a free light lunch. We also host a number of our employee fringe benefit vendors. The vendors are there to provide first-person answers to employee questions about benefits. It is a productive use of our time because employees get good first-hand answers to their questions.
Why should you care if the City’s employees are healthy and fit?
Aside from all the humanitarian reasons, employee health and fitness has a huge effect on our City budget’s bottom line. If our employees are healthier and fitter, our employees (if theory holds) will consume less healthcare and present less healthcare costs for the City to pay in employee benefits costs. If the City can cause this sequence of events to roll, it will positively effect our financial bottom line. And whatever effects our bottom line positvely, will effect our taxpayers’ collective bottom line positively. After all, almost every dollar we spend comes to us directly from you – the EP property taxpayer.
I like the employee health and benefit fair concept for both reasons. I am a fiscally conservative humanitarian at heart.
