Startinging a Company Health and Wellness Program

Employee Wellness Programs start and end with individual health. Individuals, after all, are able to  make decisions about maintaining and / or improving their health and wellbeing. Employee Employee  Wellness Programs must therefore provide the tools and resources necessary to assist and motivate  individuals to actively participate in the program.

Individual health is only one component of starting worker Employee Wellness Programs. Below you’ll  find some things to assist you in your efforts to establish a healthy atmosphere for you and your  coworkers.

Encouraging Your Employer to Start an Company Health and Wellness Program

This is the first step in starting a Employee Wellness Program. In recent times more and more companies  are starting to see the value of promoting and supporting the health of their workers. Partnership for  Prevention, a nonprofit organization, has released a sourcebook called “Healthy Workforce 2010″  (http://www.wellnessproposals.com/pdfs/tool_kits/healthy_workforce_2010.pdf). This sourcebook is an  excellent resource containing information on:
•    Benefits of Employee Wellness Programs
•    Suggestions on where to start
•    Tools like surveys and assessment forms

These resources are for both companies and workers to lead the development and determine the  effectiveness of their new Employee Wellness Program. Provide it to your employer as a place to start  or read it yourself and present your ideas.

Participating in Employee Wellness Programs

Once you have an worker Company Health and Wellness Program established, participating fully in all  aspects of the program is important. Many of us know that we need to more actively engage in Employee  Wellness Programs to improve our health, yet have difficulty finding and taking the time to do so.  These simple steps can jumpstart your participation in an worker Employee Wellness Program:
•    Examine the offerings that interest you and that you need for health  improvement.
•    Schedule time to go to the presentation or service.
•    Actively following through with recommendations from the program.
•    Make a decision now to improve your health. You will feel better today and tomorrow and  the next day for actively moving towards wellness.

Here is a list of potential Employee Wellness Programs that might be available to you at work:
•    ergonomic evaluations and training classes
•    lactation rooms and classes
•    prenatal education
•    quiet rooms for relaxation
•    stress management programs
•    fitnes centers
•    chair massage
•    nutrition education
•    onsite primary health care services
•    child care facility or resources and referral service
•    smoking cessation programs parenting classes
•    Senior care resources and referral service
•    cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose screening programs
•    flu vaccination
•    weight management and / or weight loss programs
•    health care consumerism programs
•    employee assistance programs
•    lifestyle coaching
•    onsite mammography

More information to follow in my next posting about Employee Employee Wellness Programs