Employee Wellness Plans : What are Workplace Wellness Programs?

The President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports interprets wellness as “a multidimensional state of being describing the existence of positive health in an individual as exemplified by quality of life and a sense of wellbeing.” Wellness looks beyond the current template of treating disease and focuses on preventive conduct and healthier lifestyles. Corporate Wellness Programs, also frequently referred to as Corporate Wellness Programs, serve as a complement to existing insurance-based health benefit programs and can take many forms and address a myriad different potential health conditions. They are a powerful strategy to promote positive lifestyle changes that can result in significant cost savings for businesses.

Examples of potential components of a Employee Wellness Program cover:

Health Risk Assessments / Employee Health Screenings – Health Risk Assessments (aka Health Risk Appraisals), evaluate the most prevalent lifestyle-related risks of an individual. HRAs often cover screenings for Blood Pressure, cholesterol, glucose levels and other health indicators. These analyses provide valuable benchmarking measures that ideally will allow staff members to prevent or cut their risk of diseases. Finding Wealth Through Wellness, As noted by Kathryn Krivy, director of Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Wellness Institute in Chicago, “Medically based Health Risk Assessments are a necessity because in order to affect modifications in your organization, you need to know what the problems are, and you just do not know until you get the data.”

Physical Activity and Weight Management – One of the most popular Worksite Health Promotion Programs is for corporations to supply access to a exercise facility, often on-Site. Other potential measures include offering healthier vending machines and cafeteria options, weight management support groups and fitness challenge programs. Some corporations, like hospital group Baptist Health South Florida, will even pay for staff members to frequent weight-loss sessions such as Weight Watchers.

Awareness and Education Programs – Most  organizations have events addressing the benefits of nutrition, safety or physical fitness, among other subject matters. Other options are to host a health fair or administer a disease-awareness campaign.

Behavior Modification – This covers issues like smoking, wearing seat belts, and alcohol use. While many businesses will supply assistance for workers looking to change behavior, some businesses, like medical benefits administrator Weyco, Inc., mandate modifications, such as quitting smoking, as a condition of employment.

Alternative Treatments – Other Company Health Promotion Programs can cover absorbing some or all of the costs for massages, stress-reduction activities like yoga or even herbal medicines.