Corporate wellness programs are traditionally dominated by health insurance coverage and executive health check-up programs. In recent years, some generic wellness pursuits like yoga, gym, meditation, breathwork, nutritional counselling etc have also entered the workplace.  But do any of these programs really deliver by way of less absenteeism, more productivity, more happiness, more loyalty, higher peak performance, or even just more wellness? Most CEOs and HR Managers would reply in the negative.

I don’t find this surprising at all, as such programs are not designed to deliver on two broad objectives – prevention and performance. Fortunately, a health-tech driven solution for this challenge is readily available today in the form of genomic lifestyle management. It is high time that corporates need to broaden their focus from health insurance, executive health check-ups, and generic wellness programs to such genomic-driven preventive biohacks. Here, I will briefly explain 10 most important reasons to make this shift to genomic strategies:

1) Facilitates Prevention

Corporate healthcare services like executive health check-up programs are provided by hospitals whose primary focus is on reactive treatments. These programs typically detect lifestyle diseases only after they develop, thus leaving employees with no option but lifelong medication or prohibitively expensive interventions. But genomic preventive solutions can detect lifestyle disease risks years or decades before they develop and help in preventing them via biohacks, thus empowering both the employees and the company.

2) Facilitates Peak Performance

As most CEOs have found out in dismay, traditional fine tuning of employee performance by way of management hacks or even psychological hacks doesn’t last much. But this should be expected as truly optimized human performance, calls for mind-body biohacks. Mental faculties essential at the workplace like cognition, memory, problem solving, decision making etc are governed by genetic traits, and are perfectly optimized only by genomic lifestyle programs that suggest lifestyle changes based on such personal traits.

3) Facilitates Cost Control

Health insurance is a peculiar product that silently adds on to employee costs. While insurance premiums for each unclaimed year go as total waste, each claim spikes up next year’s premium. And for employees to benefit from health insurance, they need to seriously fall sick, which is really of no benefit to them or their companies. In contrast, genomic preventive solutions are way more than health insurance by proactively helping to keep lifestyle diseases at bay via biohacks, with a one-time investment unlike the recurring health insurance expenses.

4) Facilitates Productivity

Companies often wonder why absenteeism runs rampant despite heavy investments into executive health check-ups & health insurance. It is because these programs can’t prevent the two drivers of lost productivity – infectious and non-infectious (lifestyle) diseases. The only way out is addressing the twin challenge of ensuring optimized immunity and prevention of lifestyle diseases. Genomic preventive programs have a head start in tackling both of these as immunity is best optimized by genomic biohacks that naturally guard against lifestyle diseases too.

5) Facilitates Teamwork

Fluid teamwork is absolutely essential for corporate performance, but it is easier said than done due to the constant friction between employees and between departments, as employees race to meet personal deadlines, and departments race to meet departmental deadlines. It calls for Emotional Intelligence of the highest degree, in both team members and departmental heads. Fortunately, such emotional balance is a pleasant side effect of genomic biohacks, as genes and metabolism play a pivotal role in emotion management.

6) Facilitates Natural Destressing

An internal counsellor or external psychologist is the only solutions most companies offer to tackle stress. Instead, they can do way more to soothe nerves by adopting genomic wellness solutions. Such solutions offer 360 degree personalized biohacks that call for more spaces for relaxing and taking deep breaths, and more avenues for doing wellness routines like sports, weight training, treadmills, yoga and meditation. The destressing effectiveness of such routines is multifold as these are personalized as per each employee’s personal genetic traits.

7) Facilitates Happiness

While challenges and deadlines are inevitable at the workplace, leading to an element of dread, it should be neutralized too with a culture of happiness. Team activities can go a long way in kick starting such a happiness culture. Health-tech and biohacks can also prove to be a game changer in promoting happiness, by empowering employees with health wearables and health super apps.

8) Facilitates Leadership Qualities

While corporates value the self-starter attitude in employees, it comes naturally to only a few, with the rest of them seemingly stumbling on self-doubts. But on close inspection, it can be seen that it is a lack of integrated approach that prevents most employees from assuming such leadership qualities. For human performance to be optimized to achieve leadership class, lots of personalized biohacks are needed across diet, exercise, sleep, supplements, mentoring etc

9) Facilitates Talent Acquisition

Deploying genomic preventive programs can give companies a headstart in attracting a steady stream of highly talented people. Prospective employees recognize the difference between run-of-the-mill healthcare services like executive health check-ups or health insurance that every company provides, and genomic preventive biohacks that ensure their wellbeing, immunity, performance and preventive powers. Such a competitive edge also gets spoken about in employee networks, making the company a destination for top talents.

Also read: Next-Gen Diagnostics: Powering Predictive and Personalised Healthcare 

10) Facilitates Fierce Loyalty

Companies get hurt when capable employees leave, and companies get killed when capable employees join competitors. This is why corporates need to work on unique value additions to employee wellbeing like a genomic preventive solution. Lifestyle management programs based on genomics, can help reassure employees about such genuine care, as it is capable of detecting risks for almost all common and rare lifestyle diseases, years or decades before they can hit, and help keep them at bay through personalized lifestyle biohacks.

Views expressed by: Dr. Sajeev Nair, Founder & Chairman, Vieroots

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or views of any organisation. The content is intended for informational and educational purposes only and should not be construed as medical advice.

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