Starting a Employer Health and Wellness Program
The workplace setting is a effective, but often overlooked, element in managing employee health. Here we will identify some of the best-practices in creating a Employer Health and Wellness Program that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows employees to take charge of their own health. For example, a Employer Health and Wellness Program that includes a tobacco-free workplace policy increases the likelihood that employees will try to quit tobacco use and will quit smoking successfully. Similarly, a Employer Health and Wellness Program that includes discounting healthy foods in your cafeteria and vending machines helps increase 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 creating a Employer Health and Wellness Program and workplace setting that promotes employee health.
In an era of increasing medical care costs and fervent competition, companies have a vested interest in the health of their employees. Research studies have found that, on average, employees with healthy behaviors (such as not smoking or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower medical care expenses, are absent from work less often, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than employees with unhealthy behaviors.
Employee Wellness Program: Getting Leadership Support
Employer Health and Wellness Program support from the highest level of upper management is essential to your success in creating a culture of wellness within your workplace. Look for Employer Health and 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 Employee 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 Employer Health and Wellness Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the workplace policies, physical setting, and social norms.
Obtain Employer Health and Wellness Program Staff and Financing
Starting and maintaining a Employer Health and Wellness Program within your employer needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your employer is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Employee Wellness Program. There are a number of ways to find an individual with the needed skills to guide and support your employer’s Employee Wellness Program.
Starting facilities and Employer Health and 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 workplace setting that supports the Employer Health and Wellness Program as a permanent part of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your employer.
Worker Involvement in the Employer Health and Wellness Program
Developing a cross section of workers to advise your employer’s Employer Health and Wellness Program ensures that improvements in workplace facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and obstacles of all groups of workers. In addition, these employees can support as the front-line Employer Health and Wellness Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.
Create a Employer Health and Wellness Program Vision and “Brand”
A Employer Health and Wellness Program vision and a brand are effective first steps in moving a Employer Health and Wellness Program from an idea to a reality. What would you like your workplace environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Employer Health and Wellness Program vision statement summarizes for all (employees and leaders alike) the reasons for creating a Employee Wellness Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between employee health and your employer’s ability to achieve its overall mission.
Branding your employer’s Employer Health and Wellness Program sends a message to employees that the employer’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Choose a Employer Health and Wellness Program name and logo that resonate with employees. Then use that brand on all Employer Health and Wellness Program communications with employees about the policies, facilities and programs your employer offers to promote healthy behaviors.
Evaluate Your Existing Employer Health and Wellness Program Situation
Exactly how your employer establishes a Employer Health and Wellness Program that promotes healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your employer and employee population.
Evaluate how the current workplace 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 workers’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.
Set Employer Health and Wellness Program Goals and Priorities
Use what you’ve discovered about employee health and about your current workplace setting to determine your employer’s Employer Health and Wellness Program priorities. From those Employer Health and Wellness Program priorities, define clear and measurable Employer Health and Wellness Program goals for improving employee health and your employer’s culture. Well written goals will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.
Choose Employer Health and Wellness Program Strategies
Focus your employer’s Employer Health and Wellness Program resources (time, energy and money) on strategies that are most likely to produce results: a rise in healthy eating, a rise 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 Employer Health and Wellness Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Employer Health and Wellness Program strategies are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.
The formula for Employer Health and Wellness Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.
Implement Employer Health and Wellness Program Strategies
Once you’ve chosen your Employer Health and Wellness Program Strategies, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline. The “right” amount of time for implementing each Employer Health and Wellness Program strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your employer. Work plans maintain your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to create a Employer Health and Wellness Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.
Communicate and Educate About the Employer Health and Wellness Program
Ensure employees are aware of the Employer Health and Wellness Program opportunities you’ve provided. Planning your Employer Health and Wellness Program communications allows you to communicate regularly with employees without overwhelming them at any one time.
Monitor and Report Your Employer Health and Wellness Program Results
At the same time that you plan your Employer Health and Wellness Program Strategies, 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 Employer Health and 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 medical care claims.
Report both your Employer Health and Wellness Program successes in building a healthy workplace environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides employees time for walking during the workday), and Employer Health and Wellness Program successes in getting workers to take charge of their health (a rise in the number of employees who contacted the stop-smoking program, or a rise in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).
