Company Health and Wellness : Workplace Health Promotion Program: develop a Detailed Action Plan  

The Company Wellness Program Committee ought to set out a plan for the entire year that outlines accomplishing goals/objectives, as well as supplies details for marketing and evaluating the program. The plan is the detailed map of what types of programs will be available, when and where they will be scheduled, how they will be marketed and evaluated, and what the budget is.  It is valuable to plan your wellness activities based on your goals/objectives, as well as the budget since different strategies will yield different outcomes.  By way of example, if your objective is to broaden awareness on a topic, then distributing brochures or scheduling a one-time education session may be appropriate.  Nevertheless, if your goal is to change behavior, then different strategies may be necessary, such as ongoing weekly sessions and support groups.  Click here to link to Program Design Options for additional ideas.

Worksite Wellness Program Marketing

This is the time to plan your marketing strategies!  How can you market the wellness program and ongoing activities?  No matter how you decide to, market frequently, keep it fresh, and remind staff members over and over!  Consider having an overall kickoff exercise to let everyone know about the wellness program.  Senior Management ought to offer the introduction or invitation so that all staff members are alert to their reinforcement and leadership in the program.

Possible marketing methods:

• Distributing email messages, including reminders
• Establish flyers,
• Hanging bulletin board postings,
• Writing articles,
• Mailing letters or
• Distributing special invitations.  

Other Workplace Health Promotion Program Considerations:

• Is the Company Health Promotion Program promoted to all workers or to a specific target audience?
• Do you have a Corporate Wellness Program champion (someone who is coupled with different groups in the organization, and well respected) who can help in your promotion efforts?
• If your marketing efforts aren’t working, do you have a way to revisit and change your plan?
• How will you determine performance and evaluate your program?  And how will you collect the information needed to evaluate your program?  

Topics most often included in Employee Health Promotion Programs:

• Nutrition
• Physical Activity/Exercise
• Tobacco Use Cessation
• Bone Health
• Heart Health
• Healthy Back
• Stress Reduction
• Chronic Disease Awareness & Prevention
• Self-care; Wise Medical Care Consumer
• Screening Services (BMI, Blood Pressure, bone density, blood lipids, glucose, posture, vision, and other…)
• Ergonomic Assessments
• Health Fairs
• Kids/family Events
• Others topics that staff members have interest in  

The topics and type of Worksite Health Promotion Program planned hinge upon the needs and interest, overriding goal and resources available.  Program Design Options   include awareness programs such as brochures and/or education sessions, behavior modification programs such as tobacco cessation and weight loss classes, and environmental or company reinforcement such as no smoking policies or healthy selections in snack machines.  

The programs planned also depend on the demographics of your workforce.  If you have a young, healthy workforce, you may want to focus the wellness attention on keeping workers healthy and not need to screen for disease.  Instead you might want to focus on healthy lifestyle behavior such as exercise and great diet to prevent the start of disease.  Click here for more information on strategies for keeping workers well, identifying disease early, or returning workers to work who already have a chronic conditions.

It is also significant to consider, and plan how you will evaluate the performance of your wellness program.  The system needs to be determined for tracking certain data and recording events depending on the program goals/objectives.  Step 7 discusses program assessment in more detail.   And Step 6 will launch your program!