Company Health and Wellness : Building a Corporate Wellness Program

There is no one correct way to approach wellness programs but winning programs share common success factors. These include management support and responsibility, employee participation, adequate resources, and a policy concerning health that goes hand in hand with the organization’s mission, vision and values.

Workplace Health Promotion Program: A Range of Approaches

Although the objective is to eventually have a long-term, inclusive wellness program, some corporations prefer to start with a single program at a basic level. By way of example, the first steps might be as simple as offering lunch-hour sessions on first aid or healthy eating; or they might launch a pilot project to learn how interested employees are to ensure employees needs are being met before taking on anything more ambitious. This approach provides a chance to show the effect on employees and the workplace so senior staff will be more willing to consider a larger and more far-reaching strategy.

Other organizations plan a variety of drives to meet the needs of the different sorts of people that make up their workforce. And some decide to cultivate a sound organization case, complete with a health plan, before beginning any type of program. Employers want to ensure that a new program is totally integrated with their overall organization vision and mission.

Workplace Health Promotion Program: Success Factors

Whether your business chooses to think big from the outset or to start with something smaller, always keep in mind the following key success factors:

• support and participation from management;
• employee participation in creating;
• programs that meet employee needs;
• a realistic budget; and
• continuous review.

In sports, a game plan is a series of steps that a team must follow to accomplish its objective of winning. Most winning teams plan to win. Organizations also need game plans, even if they do not call them by that name.

Good planning will help to be sure that your wellness program happens the way you want it to, and that costs can be identified in advance and kept within budget. Good planning prevents small issues from becoming bigger.

Steps in Planning a Workplace Wellness Program

Get upper management backing. You may need to foster a corporation case to convince managers that the wellness program is a corporation strategy-that employee health and job satisfaction impacts their work rate. employees need to see evidence that upper management believes in and is committed to employee health.

Establish a planning committee. Members have the potential to include representatives from employee groups as well as from human resources, health and safety, and communications.

Accumulate information. To prove that your Employee Health Promotion Program is beneficial, establish a benchmark before the program begins. You may wish to look at employee satisfaction, absenteeism rates, stress levels, prescription expenditures or WCB expenses. Review what workplace facilities are available to support employees to make healthy choices such as showers and change areas or a secure place to store a bicycle. Review employee needs through a survey or questionnaire, suggestion box or focus group. Communicate the outcome.

Organize the plan to reflect the information gathered. Include program objectives, activities and how you are going to measure whether your objectives were met. Keep the plan flexible. You may have to change direction in response to employee feedback or changes in the company’s structure.

Get management approval. Support for employee time and a budget are necessitated.

Put activities in place. Offer a variety of activities that create awareness, broaden knowledge, advance skills, and support social interaction. (Activities might include walking clubs, participation in national campaigns such as Company Wellness Programs Week, SummerActive, WinterActive, corporate challenge, golf days, and newsletters that support information about neighborhood resources.) Workplaces can also make it easier for workers to make healthy choices by offering flextime to allow workers to fit exercise in when it is convenient or by subsidizing programs in cooperation with neighborhood or private fitness facilities. A policy on catering for gatherings has the potential to ensure that healthy foods are available.

Review the plan. Share your successes with others, learn from your mistakes and modify activities.

A wellness program doesn’t have to be complicated or a huge cost. Just do it. Get reinforcement from senior staff, bring a few committed people together to generate some ideas and get started.