Employee Wellness Plans : Building a Company Wellness Program

There is no single correct way to approach wellness programs but successful programs share common success factors. These include management support and responsibility, employee involvement, adequate resources, and a health policy that goes hand in hand with the organization’s mission, vision and values.

Workplace Wellness Program: A Range of Approaches

Although the goal is to eventually have a long-term, all-inclusive wellness program, some businesses prefer to begin with a single program at a basic level. By way of example, the first steps might be as simple as offering lunch-hour sessions on first aid or healthy eating; or they might launch a pilot project to discover how interested staff members are to ensure staff members needs are being met before taking on anything more ambitious. This approach provides a chance to show the effect on staff members and the workplace so senior staff will be more willing to consider a larger and more far-reaching plan.

Other organizations plan a variety of pushes to meet the needs of the different sorts of people that make up their workforce. And some decide to foster a sound business case, complete with a health plan, before setting out on any sort of program. Businesses want to ensure that a new program is fully integrated with their overall business vision and mission.

Company Wellness Program: Success Factors

Whether your corporation chooses to think big from the outset or to activate with something smaller, always keep in mind the following key success factors:

• support and participation from management;
• employee involvement in planning;
• programs that meet employee needs;
• a realistic budget; and
• continuous review.

In sports, a game plan is a series of steps that a team must follow to accomplish its objective of winning. Most winning teams plan to win. Organizations also need game plans, even if they don’t call them by that name.

Good planning will help to ensure that your wellness program happens the way you want it to, and that costs can be identified in advance and kept within budget. Good planning prevents small concerns from becoming bigger.

Steps in Developing a Employee Health Promotion Program

Get management support. You may need to foster a business case to convince managers that the wellness program is a business strategy-that employee health and job satisfaction impacts their work rate. employees need to see evidence that management believes in and is committed to employee health.

Establish a planning committee. Members have the potential to include representatives from employee groups as well as from human resources, health and safety, and communications.

Gather information. To prove that your Worksite Health Promotion Program is productive, establish a benchmark before the program begins. You may wish to look at employee satisfaction, absenteeism rates, stress levels, prescription drug costs or WCB costs. Review what workplace facilities are available to support staff members to make healthy choices such as showers and change areas or a secure place to store a bicycle. Review employee needs through a survey or questionnaire, suggestion box or focus group. Communicate the results.

Design the plan to reflect the information gathered. Include program objectives, activities and how you are going to measure whether your objectives were met. Keep the plan flexible. You may have to change direction in response to employee feedback or changes in the company’s structure.

Obtain upper management approval. Support for employee time and a budget are needed.

Put activities in place. Offer a variety of activities that establish awareness, increase knowledge, develop skills, and support social interaction. (Activities could include walking clubs, participation in national campaigns such as Company Health Promotion Programs Week, SummerActive, WinterActive, corporate challenge, golf days, and newsletters that support information about community resources.) Workplaces have the potential to also make it easier for employees to make healthy choices by offering flextime to allow employees to fit exercise in when it is convenient or by subsidizing programs in cooperation with community or private fitness facilities. A policy on catering for gatherings has the potential to make sure that healthy foods are provided.

Evaluate the plan. Share your successes with others, learn from your mistakes and modify activities.

A wellness program doesn’t have to be complicated or a huge expenditure. Just do it. Obtain backing from upper management, bring a few committed people together to generate some ideas and get started.