Starting a Company Health and Wellness Program

The workplace environment is a powerful, but often overlooked, element in managing worker health.  Here we will identify some of the best-practices in starting a Company Health and Wellness Program that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows workers to take charge of their own health.  For example, a Company Health and Wellness Program that includes a smoke-free workplace policy improves the likelihood that workers will try to quit tobacco use and will quit smoking successfully. Similarly, a Company Health and Wellness Program that includes discounting healthy foods in your cafeteria and vending machines helps increase workers’ consumption of healthy foods which supports your investment in disease management programs for workers with diabetes, heart disease or hypertension. The following will guide you through the ten key steps in starting a Company Health and Wellness Program and workplace environment that promotes worker health.

In an era of ever-increasing health care costs and intense competition, companies have a vested interest in the health of their workers.  Research studies have found that, on average, workers with healthy behaviors (such as not smoking 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 workers with unhealthy behaviors.

Employee Wellness Program: Gaining Leadership Support

Company Health and Wellness Program support from the highest level of leadership is vital to your success in starting a culture of health within your workplace. Look for Company Health and Wellness Program support from a leader who is respected by and can sway other leaders. (It’s not necessary 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 Company Health and Wellness Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the workplace policies, physical environment, and social norms.

Capture Company Health and Wellness Program Staff and Financing

Starting and maintaining a Company 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 necessary skills to guide and support your employer’s Employee Wellness Program.

Starting facilities and Company Health and Wellness Program policies, such as those allowing workers 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 environment that supports the Company Health and Wellness Program as a permanent component of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your employer.

Worker Involvement in the Company Health and Wellness Program

Developing a cross section of employees to advise your employer’s Company Health and Wellness Program ensures that improvements in workplace facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and obstacles of all groups of employees.   In addition, these workers can support as the front-line Company Health and Wellness Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.

Create a Company Health and Wellness Program “Brand” and Vision

A Company Health and Wellness Program vision and a brand are powerful first steps in turning a Company 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 Company Health and Wellness Program vision statement summarizes for all (workers and leaders alike) the reasons for starting a Employee Wellness Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between worker health and your employer’s ability to achieve its overall mission.

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

Evaluate Your Present Company Health and Wellness Program Situation

Exactly how your employer establishes a Company 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 workers, 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.

Determine Company Health and Wellness Program Goals and Priorities

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

Select Company Health and Wellness Program Strategies

Focus your employer’s Company Health and Wellness Program resources (time, energy and money) on procedures 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 United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of studies and has identified the Company Health and Wellness Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Company Health and Wellness Program procedures are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.

The formula for Company Health and Wellness Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.

Implement Company Health and Wellness Program Strategies

Once you’ve chosen your Company Health and Wellness Program Strategies, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline.  The “right” amount of time for implementing each Company 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 establish a Company Health and Wellness Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.

Communicate and Educate About the Company Health and Wellness Program

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

Monitor and Report Your Company Health and Wellness Program Results

At the same time that you plan your Company Health and Wellness Program Strategies, think about how you’ll measure success.  It’s much easier to gather information – or to establish systems for collecting information — before you begin a Company Health and Wellness Program strategy rather than as an afterthought.   Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in worker morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in absenteeism or health care claims.

Report both your Company Health and Wellness Program successes in building a healthy workplace environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides workers time for walking during the workday), and Company Health and Wellness Program successes in getting employees to take charge of their health (a rise in the number of workers 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).