Establishing a Workplace Wellness Program

By now you’ve probably seen the data: Workplace wellness programs save money in the form of lower absenteeism, increased productivity and lower health care costs. Starting out with the right resources, people, information and priorities helps ensure that your wellness program will move in the right direction and reward you with healthier, happier and more productive employees.

TAKE IT STEP-BY-STEP

• Get upper management on board. Make sure your wellness initiatives are in line with the overall mission of the company. Get input from managers about what they’d like to see a wellness program achieve. Present the advantages of a wellness program (cost savings, a more productive workforce, etc.).
• Identify needs. Assess the health issues faced by your workers in order to tailor your program to their specific needs. A tool such as a health risk assessment (HRA) can help you collect aggregate data about employee health habits that you can then use to create an effective wellness program. Many programs cover issues such as weight loss, smoking cessation, stress management and diabetes prevention.
• Choose the right interventions. Approach health issues identified through your HRA from many directions. Reading materials and eye-catching educational posters are affordable first steps.
• Start small. Healthy habits are built slowly over months and years, and effective change occurs one step at a time. Don’t hit employees (or managers) with too much at once.
• Create a supportive environment. Ensure that the corporate culture supports the wellness program. For example, it doesn’t make sense to educate employees about repetitive stress injuries (RSIs) without helping them create a more ergonomic work environment.
• Distribute responsibility. Create wellness teams that include a wide range of titles, positions, skill levels and viewpoints. Many wellness programs fade out after the initial excitement of the launch wears off. Use group energy and ideas from your wellness teams to create forward momentum.
• Share Progress and Praise. Promote the program and its results throughout the company. Use every means that is feasible and practical to create enthusiasm for the program. Make sure that communications are clear that wellness is an organizational priority.

In forming a workplace wellness committee, consider the following guidelines:

• Establish goals and member expectations.
• Create an authoritative structure. Roles within the structure can rotate over time to distribute responsibility.
• Build a committee representative of the population.
• Identify all the key stakeholders.
• Meet regularly and treat the meetings like real business meetings with an agenda, minutes, and action items.
• Assign tasks to each member to create buy in.

Personal Best® produces one of the most extensive collections of health and wellness, safety, productivity, shift work and personal money management publications in the industry. 

• Nine monthly, subscription-based newsletters.
• Over 300 ancillary titles, which includes calendars, brochures, posters, table top posters, booklets, walking journals and audio conferences.
• Over 1,500 quality articles on health and wellness, safety, productivity, shift work and personal money management to license for use through our TopTopics site.
• Multi-language offering (Spanish, Canadian English and Canadian French) on select newsletter, calendar and brochure titles.

Representing more than five decades of experience in serving the wellness needs of thousands of organizations in the U.S. and Canada, Personal Best® is committed to supporting those organizations that believe in the power and future of wellness.