The worksite environment is a powerful, but often overlooked, element in managing employee health. Here we will identify some of the best-practices in beginning a Corporate Wellness Program that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows employees to take charge of their own health. For example, a Corporate Wellness Program that includes a tobacco-free worksite policy increases the likelihood that employees will try to quit tobacco use and will quit using tobacco successfully. Similarly, a Corporate Wellness Program that includes discounting healthy foods in your cafeteria and vending machines helps raise employees’ consumption of healthy foods which supports your investment in disease management programs for employees with diabetes, heart disease or hypertension. The following will guide you through the ten key steps in beginning a Corporate Wellness Program and worksite environment that encourages employee health.
In an era of increasing health care costs and intense competition, organizations have a vested interest in the health of their employees. Research has found that, on average, employees with healthy behaviors (such as not using tobacco or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower health care expenses, are absent from work less often, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than employees with unhealthy behaviors.
Corporate Wellness Program: Gaining Upper Management Support
Corporate Wellness Program support from the uppermost level of upper management is essential to your success in beginning a culture of wellness within your worksite. Look for Corporate Wellness Program support from a leader who is respected by and can sway other leaders. (It’s not important that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Corporate Wellness Program.) You will be relying on this culture-of-health champion to advocate for changes that you recommend and to ensure the organization allocates adequate Corporate Wellness Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the worksite policies, physical environment, and social norms.
Gain Corporate Wellness Program Staff and Budget
Starting and maintaining a Corporate Wellness Program within your company needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your company is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Corporate Wellness Program. There are a number of ways to find an individual with the needed skills to guide and support your company’s Corporate Wellness Program.
Creating facilities and Corporate Wellness Program policies, such as those allowing employees to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be expensive, but it does require adequate and sustained funding. If possible, include the creation of a worksite environment that supports the Corporate Wellness Program as a permanent component of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your company.
Employee Involvement in the Corporate Wellness Program
Developing a cross section of employees to advise your company’s Corporate Wellness Program ensures that improvements in worksite facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of employees. In addition, these employees can support as the front-line Corporate Wellness Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.
Create a Corporate Wellness Program Vision and “Brand”
A Corporate Wellness Program vision and a brand are powerful first steps in moving a Corporate Wellness Program from an idea to a reality. What would you like your worksite environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Corporate Wellness Program vision statement summarizes for all (employees and leaders alike) the reasons for beginning a Corporate Wellness Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between employee health and your company’s ability to achieve its overall mission.
Branding your company’s Corporate Wellness Program sends a message to employees that the company’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Choose a Corporate Wellness Program name and logo that resonate with employees. Then use that brand on all Corporate Wellness Program communications with employees about the policies, facilities and programs your company offers to promote healthy behaviors.
Evaluate Your Current Corporate Wellness Program Situation
Exactly how your company creates a Corporate Wellness Program that encourages healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your company and employee population.
Evaluate how the current worksite facilities, policies, and unwritten norms support — or discourage — healthy behaviors.
Gather information on the health and health-related behaviors of your employee population. The most common method is by using a validated health risk assessment. If you don’t have data specific to your employees, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data. Note: Information on employees’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.
Set Corporate Wellness Program Priorities and Goals
Use what you’ve discovered about the health of the employees and about your current worksite environment to determine your company’s Corporate Wellness Program priorities. From those Corporate Wellness Program priorities, define clear and measurable Corporate Wellness Program objectives for improving the health of the employees and your company’s culture. Well written objectives will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.
Choose Corporate Wellness Program Procedures
Focus your company’s Corporate Wellness Program resources (time, energy and money) on strategies that are most likely to produce results: an increase in healthy eating, an increase in physical activity, and a reduction in tobacco use. There’s no need to guess at what might work. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of studies and has identified the Corporate Wellness Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Corporate Wellness Program strategies are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.
The formula for Corporate Wellness Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.
Implement Corporate Wellness Program Procedures
Once you’ve chosen your Corporate Wellness Program Procedures, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline. The “right” amount of time for implementing each Corporate Wellness Program strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your company. Work plans maintain your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to create a Corporate Wellness Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.
Educate and Communicate About the Corporate Wellness Program
Ensure employees are aware of the Corporate Wellness Program opportunities you’ve provided. Planning your Corporate Wellness Program communications allows you to communicate regularly with employees without overwhelming them at any one time.
Monitor and Report Your Corporate Wellness Program Results
At the same time that you plan your Corporate Wellness Program Procedures, think about how you’ll measure success. It’s much easier to gather information – or to create systems for collecting information — before you implement a Corporate Wellness Program strategy rather than as an afterthought. Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in employee morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in rates of absenteeism or health care claims.
Report both your Corporate Wellness Program successes in building a healthy worksite environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides employees time for walking during the workday), and Corporate Wellness Program successes in getting employees to take charge of their health (an increase in the number of employees who contacted the stop-smoking program, or an increase in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).
