Dr Kenneth Pelletier, Professor of Medicine and Professor of Public Health at The University of California San Francisco and the University of Arizona Schools of Medicine, tackled the issue of workplace wellness during a panel at the recent Global Wellness Summit.

Pelletier argued that wellness providers need to learn a vocabulary that enables them to grow their workplace wellness contracts by communicating more effectively with businesses.

“Corporations don’t know you exist,” he explained.

Pelletier said a study to be published next month will show that companies with corporate wellness schemes generate a 200 per cent greater return for shareholders, and that a proportion of this profit can be attributed to their wellness programmes.

Pelletier took a sample of companies that have won the C. Everett Koop Award – named for the former US Surgeon General and designed to recognise workplace health programmes – and looked at their earnings three years before and after winning the award. Results showed that against an average among the S&P 500 of a 150 per cent return, the Koop winners showed a whopping 350 per cent return over the six-year period.

Pelletier also said today’s measure of return on investment will rapidly be replaced by a new measure – value on investment – which includes things like satisfaction, employee motivation, staff turnover and performance profitability, and that companies are becoming more interested in maintaining a culture of health.