Good Employee Wellness Programs: Individual Wellness
Wellness might be the fatal flaw in your Employee Wellness Program. Is Wellness part of your strategy? Does workplace wellness stop when your workers leave the office?
Wellness Continuity
If workers don’t have the tools to pursue health and wellness on a Individual level, then it becomes easy for them to “fall off the wagon” and slide back into a unealthy lifestyles. If you have a walking program, for example, it should encourage workers to build walking routes near their homes, perhaps with the cooperation of the neighborhood association or coworkers who live in the neighborhood.
Employee Wellness Programs: Always on Your Mind
Your Employer Health and Wellness Program coordinator should have “vacation wellbeing” as part of their job scope. In other words, you don’t want a Employer Health and Wellness Program to stop at the boundaries of the workplace campus. Instead, integrate Individual health and wellness with your Employee Wellness Programs.
This will benefit the Employee Wellness Plans in two ways:
it reduces the chance that the employee will come back to the office feeling unfit, overwhelmed and unable to resume their Employee Wellness Programs; and
it shows that their company is just as invested in their Individual health and wellness as they are
Like a marathon, Individual health and wellness is a long-term endeavor and it’s challenging for anyone to do in isolation. Simply put, it’s easier to maintain your health when you know others are depending on you and watching your Individual performance. It’s easier to maintain to an fitness program when you have a jogging partner who wakes you up when you oversleep, or spots you when you’re lifting weights.
Similarly, it’s easier to maintain to your Employer Health and Wellness Program when you know your company is supporting you and wishing you the best.
Don’t Dictate Individual Health
Just as Wellness surveys serve a vital function in building a Employee Wellness Program, it’s critical that you involve workers in designing an off-site wellness strategy. No one enjoys being told what to do, but everyone enjoys having assistance in tacking tough problems. Make it clear that workers are in charge of their own health and wellness. Your role as their health management partner is to support, advise, counsel, offer resources and information.
Of course, don’t forget that part of Individual health and wellness responsibility is to offer good health risk assessment baselines so workers can proceed safely on the road to better fitness.