Archive for October, 2008

The workplace setting is a powerful, but frequently overlooked, element in managing employee health.  Here we will identify some of the best-practices in beginning a Workplace Wellness Program that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows employees to take charge of their own health.  For example, a Workplace Wellness Program that includes a tobacco-free workplace policy improves the likelihood that employees will try to quit tobacco use and will quit using tobacco successfully. Similarly, a Workplace 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 beginning a Workplace Wellness Program and workplace setting that encourages employee health.

In an era of rising healthcare costs and fierce competition, businesses 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 healthcare expenses, are absent from work less frequently, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than employees with unhealthy behaviors.

Workplace Wellness Program: Getting Leadership Support

Workplace Wellness Program support from the uppermost level of upper management is essential to your success in beginning a culture of wellness within your workplace. Look for Workplace 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 Workplace 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 Workplace Wellness Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the workplace policies, physical setting, and social norms.

Capture Workplace Wellness Program Staff and Financing

The creation and maintenance of a Workplace Wellness Program within your business needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your business is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Workplace Wellness Program.  There are a number of ways to find an individual with the required skills to guide and support your business’s Workplace Wellness Program.

Creating facilities and Workplace 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 financing.  If possible, include the creation of a workplace setting that supports the Workplace Wellness Program as a permanent part of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your business.

Staff Member Involvement in the Workplace Wellness Program

Setting up a representative group of workers to advise your business’s Workplace Wellness Program ensures that improvements in workplace facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of workers.   In addition, these employees can serve as the front-line Workplace Wellness Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.

Create a Workplace Wellness Program Vision and “Brand”

A Workplace Wellness Program vision and a brand are powerful first steps in moving a Workplace Wellness Program from an idea to a reality. What would you like your workplace environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Workplace Wellness Program vision statement summarizes for all (employees and leaders alike) the reasons for beginning a Workplace Wellness Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between employee health and your business’s ability to achieve its overall mission.

Branding your business’s Workplace Wellness Program conveys to employees that the business’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Select a Workplace Wellness Program name and logo that resonate with employees. Then use that brand on all Workplace Wellness Program communications with employees about the policies, facilities and programs your business offers to promote healthy behaviors.

Determine Your Present Workplace Wellness Program Situation

Exactly how your business creates a Workplace Wellness Program that encourages healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your business and employee population.

Determine 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.

Determine Workplace Wellness Program Goals and Priorities

Use what you’ve learned about employee health and about your current workplace setting to determine your business’s Workplace Wellness Program priorities. From those Workplace Wellness Program priorities, define clear and measurable Workplace Wellness Program objectives for improving employee health and your business’s culture. Well written objectives will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.

Select Workplace Wellness Program Procedures

Focus your business’s Workplace 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 Workplace Wellness Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Workplace Wellness Program strategies are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.

The formula for Workplace Wellness Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.

Implement Workplace Wellness Program Procedures

Once you’ve chosen your Workplace Wellness Program Procedures, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline.  The “right” amount of time for implementing each Workplace Wellness Program strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your business.  Work plans keep your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to create a Workplace Wellness Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.

Educate and Communicate About the Workplace Wellness Program

Ensure employees are aware of the Workplace Wellness Program opportunities you’ve provided.   Planning your Workplace Wellness Program communications allows you to communicate regularly with employees without overwhelming them at any one time.

Monitor and Report Your Workplace Wellness Program Results

At the same time that you plan your Workplace 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 Workplace 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 absenteeism or healthcare claims.

Report both your Workplace 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 Workplace Wellness Program successes in getting workers 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).