Wellness Program Blog

Evaluations determine the outcome of a Company Wellness . They help you discover if your objectives were met. It is a great idea to add an assessment component to your Company Wellness .

Evaluations may conclude that some interventions didn’t work well. You may discover that a popular Company Wellness  costs too much and didn’t really affect employees’ health. While these may not be the outcomes you hoped for, without this information you might continue ineffective interventions. Having this information will help you advance better solutions. When your results are great, it’s magnificent! You can spread the word to workers and management that your program is achieving its objectives.

Three primary areas of an assessment

• Company Wellness  structure – The basic framework of the program
• Company Wellness  process – How well the program is run
• Company Wellness  outcomes – Whether the program met the set objectives

Common questions used to evaluate a Company Wellness

Company Wellness Structure Questions

• What is included in the Company Wellness ? What is the intervention?
• Where does the Company Wellness  take place?
• How is the Company Wellness  delivered? What content is included?
• Who manages the Company Wellness ?

Company Wellness  Process Questions

• How many people take part?
• Do participants complete the Company Wellness ?
• Are participants satisfied?
• Which aspects of the Company Wellness  are best attended?

Company Wellness  Outcome Questions

• Does the Company Wellness  better knowledge about health problems?
• Does the Company Wellness  modify behavior?
• Does the Company Wellness  save the company money?
• What is the return on investment (ROI)?

• Ascertain through an employee survey what incentives/rewards they value.
• Ascertain what incentives/rewards the company can offer as well as what the budget will allow.
• Be sure that every colleague who achieves a objective receives some recognition.
• Avoid offering incentives/rewards for the “best” or the “most.”
• Avoid using food as a reward.
• Use incentives/rewards to encourage your Company Wellness , through logos and branding.

Incentives bolster workers to adopt positive behaviors or maintain an existing positive behavior that may potentially help the employee stay healthy and live longer. Adopting positive health behavior is fundamentally what wellness is about.

Incentives can be used to improve participation rates, help people complete a Company Wellness , or help people modify or adhere to healthy lifestyles. Providing incentives/rewards and rewards will send an valuable message to the workers that your company is committed to helping them with working on their health. It also plays a valuable role in motivating people to take part.

Tips on how to choose appropriate incentives/rewards:

• Ascertain through an employee survey what incentives/rewards they value.
• Ascertain what incentives/rewards the company can offer as well as what the budget will allow.
• Be sure that every colleague who achieves a objective receives some recognition.
• Avoid offering incentives/rewards for the “best” or the “most.”
• Avoid using food as a reward.
• Use incentives/rewards to encourage your Company Wellness , through logos and branding.

When creating a all-inclusive Company Wellness , make sure that it consists of a variety of awareness, lifestyle modification, supportive environment programs, policies and activities that target risk behaviors, and the needs and interests of the workers. It will be valuable to review and revise existing policies governing such areas as smoking sections and the employee cafeteria.

Tips on designing a Company Wellness :

• Establish activities based on your intended objectives approaching the specific needs of your workers. Focus on those topics that are of greatest interest to your workers and the greatest needs of your company, in that order. Avoid topics with narrow appeal.
• Keep it simple. Design the Company Wellness  so it’s easy for the participants to be aware of and track.
• Integrate a combination of activities to include awareness, educational, and behavior elements.
• Identify activities in which every employee can take part.

Recommendations for your Company Wellness :

• Challenges. Activities that focus on practicing a desired behavior that continues for 4-8 weeks and focuses on specific topics (such as physical exercise, nutrition, or stress management).
• Learning experiences. This includes classes, videos, and classes.
• Behavior changes (such as smoking cessation). You may or may not offer interventions at the workplace. However, you ought to bolster people to make lifestyle changes that they want to make even without an external incentive.
• Education on disease management. By way of example, support and education groups for diabetes, elevated Blood Pressure (BP), etc.
• Learing new skills. By way of example, CPR and first aid.
• Preventive screenings like Blood Pressure (BP), blood lipids, and vision.

Source: Adapted from the Building Healthy Texans Worksite Wellness Toolkit.

Establish objectives

Goals are general standard procedures that explain what you want to achieve. Objectives define strategies or steps to take to attain the identified objective.

A wellness program ought to have a “destination”. Use the results of your surveys and your wellness committee’s mission statement as guides. Consider these ideas:

• Focus on making health information and learning resources readily available to workers
• Focus on group activities so workers can work together to support and bolster healthier lifestyles
• Establish a wellness program that is visible to both workers and to your customers
• Focus on written policies and standard procedures
• Set objectives for your wellness program.

Review Guidelines for Writing Goals.

Goals Should Be

Specific – A objective is specific when it supports a description of what will be accomplished. It will state exactly what the company intends to accomplish. It ought to be written so that it can be easily and clearly communicated. A specific objective will make it easier for those writing objectives and action plans to address the following questions:

• Who is to be involved?
• What is to be accomplished?
• Where is it to be done?
• When is it to be done?

Measurable – A objective is measurable if it is quantifiable. To determine if your objective is measurable, ask questions such as: How much? How many? How will I know when it is accomplished?

Attainable – You can attain most any objective you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable.

Realistic – Realistic, means “do-able.” The objective needs to be realistic for your company and where the company is at the moment. A objective to take out all the high fat items in the vending machines may not be realistic for your company right now; a better objective would be to substitute some of the chips, candy bars and pies for pretzels, yogurt and dried fruit.

Timely – Finally, a objective must have a timeframe: for next week, in three months, by age 35. It must have a starting and ending point. It ought to also have some intermediate points at which progress can be assessed. Limiting the time in which a objective must be accomplished helps to focus effort toward its achievement. If you do not set a time, the commitment is too vague. It tends not to happen because you feel you can begin at any time. Without a time limit, there’s no urgency to begin taking action now.

Successful wellness programs are designed to meet the needs and interests of the workers. Ask workers what they are interested in, and what needs they have. People are more willing to take part and support wellness efforts if they are involved in the decision-making process.

When creating a survey, keep the following hints in mind:

• Ask mostly closed form questions, especially if you will be sending the survey to a big number of workers. Closed form questions offer specific choices and are easy to tabulate.
• Invite comments, suggestions and recommendations, or ask open-ended questions at the end of the survey. Open-ended items are more difficult to summarize.
• Include a brief explanatory cover letter with the survey with the signature of the company president. Make sure to include a statement about confidentiality and anonymity.
• Ask a group of representative workers to review the survey before it is distributed. Find out if the questions will be understood by workers and won’t be objected to.
• Include demographic information at the beginning, or end of the survey (gender, age, shift, site, department, etc.).
• Conduct a random drawing for a valued incentive item for all those who returned the survey. This could improve the response rate.

One rule to consider concerning surveys is if you have fewer than 500 workers, everyone ought to receive one. The benefit of everyone receiving a survey can be valuable. If you have over 500 workers, a sample of the work population from each department will suffice. The higher the response, the more valid and reliable the results. A minimum response of 40% to 50% is considered valuable.

A essential first step in organizing your company’s wellness program is the formation of a Company Wellness  Committee. The focus of the Company Wellness  Committee is to plan, encourage, and implement the program. The Company Wellness  Committee establishes continuity, motivation, and broad ownership of the program as well as supports an excellent vehicle for communication.

So who ought to be on the Company Wellness  Committee? Consider appointing the following people/departments to your Company Wellness  Committee:

• Upper Management within your company
• Union representatives
• Human resources department
• Employee Assistance Program(EAP)
• Information technology
• Communications
• Health and safety department
• workers interested in health and wellness

Building a efficacious Company Wellness requires employee time as well as money. Some larger employers may invest 20 hours per week for three to six months preparing all the steps prior to starting a Company Wellness .

Anywhere from 4 to 10 people meeting monthly equals a Company Wellness  Committee. A mission statement for the Company Wellness  Committee ought to be developed by the second meeting. This way, everyone knows what the Company Wellness Committee is working toward.

Once a wellness program has been established, the committee’s size and meeting schedule may change. Still, no fewer than 4 members ought to meet at least quarterly so the group – and the wellness program – does not fade away.

Support from management is important to building a efficacious wellness program! Visible management support is one of the most vital factors in the success of a workplace Company Wellness . Senior Staff executives are responsible for making sure that the company meets its objectives. They can offer additional assistance by helping you to link your Company Wellness  objectives to company outcomes, thereby positioning Company Wellness  as a fundamental part of the company.

It is valuable to foster support and excitement for the program from all echelons of the company including upper management, mid-level management, and grass-root workers.

The challenge for any Company Wellness  coordinator is convincing management about the potential value of Company Wellness  to the company and conceptualizing how Company Wellness  pushes can impact the company in a meaningful manner. The American Journal of Health Promotion is a great resource to support you with obtaining convincing information on the advantages of a Company Wellness .

Company Wellness support from management can come in countless different ways:

• Involvement in the wellness program planning process
• Distribution of funding for the wellness program
• Support for time given to the wellness program
• Participation in wellness activities
• Administration by management, such as the distribution of a letter of support for the program.
• Flexibility of employee schedules to accommodate wellness activities

The first step in creating your wellness/Company Wellness is to be aware of your company and how Company Wellness  will fit into the current structure. By researching your organization’s history with similar programs and eliciting feedback from co-workers, you can discover the best solution for your company.

Company Wellness : Research Questions

• Find out if Company Wellness  has been done in the past. If so, what worked and what did not?
• Was it widely accepted?
• Was programming ? Why or why not?
• What does your company hope to gain from launching a Company Wellness ?

Answers to these questions will help you begin the process of creating a culture of wellness within your company. It is imperative that you assess the environment before starting a program.

According to the American Journal of Health Promotion, “Health promotion is the science and art of helping people modify their lifestyle to move toward a state of ideal health. Optimal health is defined as a balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health. Lifestyle modification can be facilitated through a combination of efforts to enhance awareness, modify behavior, and set up environments that support great health practices. Of the three, supportive environments will probably have the greatest impact in producing lasting change.”

Company Wellness : Action Steps

The process of assembling a Company Wellness involves:

• Identifying the current health status of your workers
• Determining the appropriate programs and interventions to offer
• Promoting and launching the programs
• Building in motivational incentives/rewards
• Measuring the impact
• Revising programs based on assessment outcomes

It may even include creating policies and procedures that support employee participation in wellness activities at your workplace (such as flextime).

Steps to Starting a Company Wellness

• Conduct an company assessment
• Obtain management support
• Establish a Company Wellness  Committee
• Obtain employee input
• Establish objectives
• Design and implement program activities
• Identify incentives/rewards
• Assess outcomes

One of the ways the government plans to better the nation’s health is through all-inclusive Company Wellness Programs. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, these programs may help workers live healthier lifestyles by creating supportive work environments and offering awareness, education and behavior modification programs. In fact, one of the objectives of Healthy People 2010, a set of health objectives for the nation to achieve by the year 2010, is to improve the proportion of workers that take part in a all-inclusive Company Wellness at their workplace to 75 percent.

Wellness is a great concept. It brings happiness into health and encourages a truly holistic approach to life. Wikipedia defines wellness as a healthy balance of the mind-body and spirit that results in an central feeling of wellness. It sounds like exactly what every one is looking for. But when you begin to talk about corporate wellness, or workplace wellness, all life goes out of the concept. Total solutions, disease management and health evaluation do not inspire visions of enjoying life and living it to the full. They begin from the assumption that sickness is here to stay and needs to be discovered, managed and controlled but can never be healed.

The wellness industry is growing phenomenally fast. Wellness guru, Paul Zane Pilzer, has labeled it the next trillion dollar industry. But wellness has two different faces. On the one hand there are the small employers – people working from home or in small centers selling all kinds of wellness products and services at a speed of growth that is escalating rapidly. On the other hand corporate wellness is also exploding but in a very different direction.

The baby boomers who are driving the popular wellness revolution have been described as the first generation to refuse to accept the inevitability of death. They are actively looking for ways to prevent aging, stay healthy into old age and enjoy themselves more than ever before after retirement. This is a radical departure from current notions of old age, which are often dominated by pictures of sickness, frailty and suffering.

The employers have been largely forced to take on wellness. This is partly through legislative pressure, with countless countries introducing laws to make employers liable for stress-related sickness in their workers. It is also monetarily motivated, as research has repeatedly determined the enormous costs of absenteeism (and increasingly of presenteeism as well).

Whereas the baby boomers are actively looking for new solutions and new lifestyles the employers are struggling to organize largely traditional and mainstream health systems, such as doctors, nurses, insurance and screening systems. The concern is that the traditional health system does not have solutions for the problems that people are handling.

Nobody ever went to see a doctor to get happy, because a doctor doesn’t have any clue how to make people happy. And countless stress-related health problems are described as chronic diseases, which means that they last for a very long time – or maybe for the rest of your life – because there is no medical cure. Counseling is a common offering in employers for emotional problems, but whilst it may offer a useful pressure valve it is not a powerful treatment for stress, unhappiness or depression.

Imagine walking into a company where the workers are happy, healthy, full of inspiration, fit, love working, have meaningful family lives, active social lives, and enjoyable relationships at work and in their community. That kind of company would be a pleasure to work in and bound to be efficacious because people would be working to their optimum capacity.

So can we set up a system of true wellness that will serve the development of the employers and their workers and will pay for itself because of the advantages that both sides will gain?

First of all we have to face the fact that we can’t place all the responsibility into the hands of the current health system. Rates of Absenteeism, stress, depression, the very roots of the wellness revolution, have not been solved by the current system. If they had been we wouldn’t have this revolution, we would all be much more well. So we need to look elsewhere for solutions.

We also cannot rely on makeshift feel-great wellness offerings, such as the onsite massage group which visits the office once a month or the wellness day that raises awareness for a little while but leaves most people unaffected. They are easy to organize but have little or no real effect on employee wellness.

Business needs are different than individual needs and many of the new small wellness employers that are springing up simply don’t have the capacity to serve the corporate market. However it is in the best interest of both employers and workers to discover and advance systems of health and wellness that really work – that benefit people to be happy, handle stress, love working, and to have sufficient energy to go home at the end of the day and enjoy their family and social life. So far the corporate world has hijacked the concept of wellness and turned it into a modern version of occupational health. It is time to raise the vision and find out how to make truly healthy, happy workplaces where people thrive.