Health Wellness ProgramHealth and Wellness Programs and Wellness Program Consulting

Create goals/objectives

Goals are general standard procedures that explain what you want to achieve. Objectives define strategies or steps to take to attain the identified objective.

A wellness program ought to have a “destination”. Use the outcome of your surveys and your wellness committee’s mission statement as guides. Consider these ideas:

• Focus on making health information and learning resources readily available to staff members
• Focus on group activities so workers can work together to support and bolster healthier lifestyles
• Establish a wellness program that is visible to both workers and to your customers
• Focus on written policies and standard procedures
• Set objectives for your wellness program.

Review Guidelines for Writing Goals.

Goals Should Be

Specific – A objective is specific when it provides a description of what will be accomplished. It will state exactly what the corporation intends to accomplish. It should be written so that it can be easily and clearly communicated. A specific objective will make it easier for those writing objectives and action plans to address the following questions:

• Who is to be involved?
• What is to be accomplished?
• Where is it to be done?
• When is it to be done?

Measurable – A goal is measurable if it is quantifiable. To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as: How much? How many? How will I know when it is accomplished?

Attainable – You can attain most any intention you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable.

Realistic – Realistic, means “do-able.” The intention needs to be realistic for your company and where the company is at the moment. A intention to take out all the high fat items in the vending machines may not be realistic for your company right now; a better intention would be to substitute some of the chips, candy bars and pies for pretzels, yogurt and dried fruit.

Timely – Finally, a goal must have a timeframe: for next week, in three months, by age 35. It must have a starting and ending point. It must also have some intermediate points at which progress can be assessed. Limiting the time in which a goal must be accomplished helps to focus effort toward its execution. If you don’t set a time, the responsibility is too vague. It tends not to happen because you feel you can start at any time. Without a time limit, there’s no urgency to start taking action now.

Successful wellness programs are designed to meet the needs and interests of the employees. Ask employees what they are interested in, and what needs they have. People are more willing to take part and support wellness efforts if they are involved in the decision-making process.

When creating a survey, keep the following hints in mind:

• Ask mostly closed form questions, especially if you will be sending the survey to a big number of employees. Closed form questions offer specific choices and are easy to tabulate.
• Invite comments, opinions and recommendations, or ask open-ended questions at the end of the survey. Open-ended items are more difficult to summarize.
• Include a brief explanatory cover letter with the survey with the signature of the employer president. Make sure to include a statement about confidentiality and anonymity.
• Ask a group of representative employees to review the survey before it is distributed. Find out if the questions will be understood by employees and won’t be objected to.
• Include demographic information at the beginning, or end of the survey (gender, age, shift, site, department, etc.).
• Conduct a random drawing for a valued incentive item for all those who returned the survey. This might boost the response rate.

One rule to consider concerning surveys is if you have fewer than 500 employees, everyone ought to receive one. The benefit of everyone receiving a survey can be significant. If you have over 500 employees, a sample of the work population from each department will suffice. The higher the response, the more valid and reliable the results. A minimum response of 40% to 50% is considered significant.

A vital first step in organizing your company’s wellness program is the formation of a Corporate Wellness Program Committee. The focus of the Corporate Wellness Program Committee is to plan, encourage, and start the program. The Corporate Wellness Program Committee establishes continuity, motivation, and broad ownership of the program as well as supplies an great vehicle for communication.

So who ought to be on the Workplace Wellness Program Committee? Consider appointing the following people/departments to your Workplace Wellness Program Committee:

• Senior Leadership within your corporation
• Union representatives
• Human resources department
• EAP
• Information technology
• Communications
• Health and safety department
• workers interested in health and wellness

Building a successful Employee Wellness Program requires employee time as well as money. Some larger organizations may spend 20 hours per week for three to six months preparing all the steps prior to initiating a Employee Wellness Program.

Anywhere from 4 to ten people meeting monthly equals a Company Wellness Program Committee. A mission statement for the Company Wellness Program Committee must be developed by the second meeting. This way, everyone knows what the Company Wellness Program Committee is working toward.

Once a wellness program has been established, the committee’s size and meeting schedule may change. Still, no fewer than 4 participants should meet at least quarterly so the group – and the wellness program – does not fade away.

Support from management is essential to building a efficacious wellness program! Visible management backing is one of the most vital factors in the success of a workplace Worksite Health Promotion Program. Senior Staff executives are responsible for making sure that the company meets its objectives. They can support additional assistance by helping you to link your Worksite Health Promotion Program objectives to company outcomes, thereby positioning Worksite Health Promotion Program as a fundamental part of the company.

It is significant to create support and excitement for the program from all echelons of the organization including upper management, mid-level management, and grass-root staff members.

The challenge for any Employee Wellness Program coordinator is convincing management about the potential value of Employee Wellness Program to the organization and conceptualizing how Employee Wellness Program drives can impact the organization in a meaningful manner. The American Journal of Health Promotion is a great resource to assist you with obtaining convincing information on the advantages of a Employee Wellness Program.

Employee Wellness Program support from management can come in countless different ways:

• Involvement in the wellness program planning process
• Distribution of funding for the wellness program
• Support for time given to the wellness program
• Participation in wellness events
• Leadership by management, such as the distribution of a letter of support for the program.
• Flexibility of employee schedules to accommodate wellness activities

The first step in developing your wellness/Workplace Health Promotion Program is to understand your corporation and how Workplace Health Promotion Program will fit into the current structure. By researching your organization’s history with similar programs and eliciting feedback from co-workers, you can find the best solution for your corporation.

Corporate Wellness Program: Research Questions

• Find out if Workplace Health Promotion Program has been done in the past. If so, what worked and what did not?
• Was it widely accepted?
• Was programming efficacious? Why or why not?
• What does your business hope to gain from implementing a Workplace Wellness Program?

Answers to these questions will help you begin the process of creating a culture of wellness within your employer. It is imperative that you assess the environment before starting a program.

The expenditures of healthcare have been rising more than 10 percent each year for several years. A substantial amount of the money invested in the healthcare system treats costly illnesses and diseases.

• Approximately 95 percent of the $1.4 trillion that we spend as a nation on health goes to direct healthcare services, while about 5 percent is allocated to preventing disease and promoting health.
• Potentially, 50 percent to 70 percent of all diseases are avoidable as they are associated with potentially-modifiable health risks.
• In an effort to optimize employee health, reduce preventable health care utilization and enhance work performance, and in turn lower health care costs and improve employee satisfaction and retention, many corporations are planning, or are interested in planning, Workplace Wellness Programs for employees.

The benefits of workplace wellness are well documented. Greater than 120 research studies repeatedly show themes such as improvements in health outcomes coupled with high returns on investment (ROI). Some primary findings include the following:

• Savings of $3.48 in reduced medical care expenditures per dollar invested.
• Savings of $5.82 in lower absenteeism expenditures per dollar invested.
• ROIs of at least $3 to $8 per dollar invested within five years of program implementation.
• Lifestyle behavior modification programs: $3 to $6 ROI within 2 to 5 years.
• Self care, decision reinforcement programs: $2 to $3 ROI within a year.
• Disease Management (DM) programs: $7 to $10 return on investment within a year.

By offering health improvement programs, businesses are not only providing an additional service for workers, but they are also gaining fiscally. Furthermore, the impact of a health improvement program goes beyond decreased health care cost and ROI. A health improvement program can affect work rate, absenteeism, morale, recruitment success, turnover, and health care expenditures.

• Source: Rees, C., and Finch, R. (2004). Health Improvement: A comprehensive guide to designing, implementing and evaluating worksite programs. National Business Group on Health, 1 (1), 1-7.

According to the American Journal of Health Promotion, “Health promotion is the science and art of helping people change their lifestyle to move toward a state of good health. Optimal health is defined as a balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health. Lifestyle shift can be facilitated through a combination of efforts to enhance awareness, change behavior, and set up environments that support good health practices. Of the three, supportive environments will probably have the greatest effect in producing lasting change.”

Workplace Wellness Program: Action Steps

The process of building a Company Wellness Program involves:

• Identifying the current health status of your employees
• Determining the appropriate programs and interventions to offer
• Promoting and implementing the programs
• Building in motivational incentives/rewards
• Measuring the impact
• Revising programs based on assessment outcomes

It may even include planning policies and procedures that support employee participation in wellness activities at your worksite (such as flextime).

Steps to Starting a Worksite Wellness Program

• Conduct an business assessment
• Obtain upper management support
• Establish a Worksite Health Promotion Program Committee
• Get employee input
• Design objectives and goals
• Design and implement program activities
• Select incentives
• Assess outcomes

One of the ways the government plans to better the nation’s health is through accross the board Corporate Wellness Programs. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, these programs may help workers live healthier lifestyles by creating supportive work environments and offering awareness, education and behavior modification programs. In fact, one of the goals and objectives of Healthy People 2010, a set of health objectives for the nation to achieve by the year 2010, is to stimulate the proportion of workers that participate in a accross the board Corporate Wellness Program at their workplace to 75 percent.

5 Ways to Review and Improve Your staff members’ Health

Emotional health is a state of wellness that comes from understanding and acknowledging our emotions and finding appropriate ways to express them. As workers, we often bring emotional problems from our childhood or current family life into the worksite because we haven’t dealt with them effectively outside of work. This can seriously damage worksite relationships and lead to poor achievement and negative feelings all around.

Many tools and techniques exist for helping us improve our emotional health. Some of the most common are given below, with real-life case histories illustrating their use. If an unpleasant mood or feeling persists over a length of time, do not hesitate to seek out a qualified professional. Workplace Wellness Programs usually have professional support already in place as part of their services.

1. Health Coaching / Health Counseling:
One of the hallmarks of emotional health is the willingness to ask for help when we need it. Confidential professional help, the coaching and counseling provided by employee assistance or wellness programs, can provide an external source of strength and insight for “working out” emotionally-based problems rather than “working them in” to your job.

2. Self-help Groups:
Self-help groups are designed to aid people in emotional situations in which they feel alone. The purpose of these groups is twofold: to allow people to safely feel and express their emotions, and to help break their isolation at work and/or in society at large and reintegrate them into society with the support of a peer group.

The classic self-help group is Alcoholics Anonymous, but thanks to technology, it’s possible to associate with others that have common health challenges, no matter how unique the situation. People are taking advantage of tele-conference groups and social websites, such as sparkpeople.com and revolutionhealth.com. Corporate Wellness Programs frequently have such groups available through web-based or telephone support. Progressive corporate wellness provider Exan Wellness, for example, offers teleconference cell groups and moderated wellness forums for interacting with others in a supportive, confidential and anonymous environment. People with shared challenges get together and discuss the emotional challenges they are facing at work or in other areas of their lives and work through modification together.

3. Journaling: Journaling is often recommended by counsellors as a way to help identify and process emotions. People record their emotions in writing as they experience them, in whatever form they wish. By helping the writer gain greater emotional clarity, journaling can help in making more emotionally informed decisions. In much the same way, letter writing enables people to identify and process the emotions they feel in relation to others. The letter need not be sent or its contents shared: it simply provides a place for the expression of feelings.

An 18-year-old “army brat,” Brent has always done well at school, academically and athletically. But in his last year of high school, something seems to have happened to him. He has lost all interest in school, becoming moody and withdrawn.

Brent describes to his guidance counselor all the times he had to move when he was growing up. Each move wrenched him from his friends and forced him to play the role of the “new kid on the block.” The counselor suggests that Brent write letters to the friends he has missed over the years telling them how he felt. Finally, he has a chance to say a proper goodbye.

4. Evaluate Your Emotional Wellness: Companies that seek to boost employees’ interpersonal skills, or emotional intelligence in the workplace are more efficacious, according to ground-breaking journalist Daniel Goleman. And emotional intelligence is the buzzword in workplaces these days. Some Company Health Promotion Programs have information about emotional intelligence, or emotional health assessments. Seek out more information about emotional intelligence for better corporate wellness.

5. Friendships/Support Systems: Friendships allow people to feel supported in their emotional journeys. At the same time, they give people an opportunity to foster their empathetic skills. These skills are also significant for worksite health. When we are empathic with fellow employees, we help them resolve detrimental or unhealthy emotions. New friendships are made through hobbies, classes, clubs, or even through online groups. Many people are finding emotional satisfaction by connecting or re-connecting with friends through Facebook and other social websites.

At times worksite stress that is not dealt with in a healthy manner can be brought home. A 36-year-old mother of three, Sarah, wants to be a wonderful wife, a wonderful mother, and a success at her work. One day, drained after a long day at work, she shouted at her rambunctious children and threatened to hit her youngest son. Her behavior horrified her. To make matters worse, she believes she is a failure at her work as well as at motherhood. She watches with jealousy as younger co-workers advance much more rapidly up the corporate ladder despite having less experience than she has.

On the advice of a counselor, she decides to take time out for herself and take a course for amateur painters. It doesn’t take long before she strikes up a friendship with a single mom in the class. She once led a life very similar to Sarah’s before managing to achieve a better balance between work and family. Her new friend becomes a much-necessitated sounding board for Sarah and offers her perspectives on her life that she hadn’t considered before.

25 percent Jump in Employer Interest in Employee Health and Wellness

Worksite wellness for their staff members, corporations are discovering, is good for the health of their corporations as well. Workplace Wellness Programs help to cut the expenditures associated with poor employee health, which include absenteeism, loss of work rate and poor work quality.

A current Hewitt Associates survey of over 500 United States businesses indicated a valuable paradigm shift in how businesses view health benefits for their workers. Of those surveyed this year, 88% are committed to instituting long-term medical care assistance programs (over the next 3-5 years) for their workers, with the goal of boosting the health and work rate of their workforce. This represents a 25% growth in interest in Corporate Wellness Programs over 2007.

A strong offering of Employee Health Promotion Programs to meet the demand has resulted. Health assistance providers have broadened their programs with tools that address general lifestyle factors, physical, social and psychological health factors. Programs look to predict chronic conditions in their workers and give them the tools and the information to prevent it. Organizations also demand a way to measure the success of their health care spending.

“Self-care is our motive,” says Vic Lebouthillier, president of progressive wellness and health provider Exan Wellness.”We really believe giving workers tools to help them manage their own health, and promoting the benefits, while giving people resources to reach out for help is the key to successful lifestyle modification. Corporations are also telling us they need a cost-effective way to deliver Workplace Health Promotion Programs. The sort of program we have developed over years delivers the highest health care return on investment.”

Combining workplace wellness promotions, web-based assessments and health trackers, web-based health information, telephone conferences and self-help groups, and access to a wide variety of health professionals, is behind the success of the Exan program. “Having web-based statistics about workers’ health also makes it easier to track the bottom line – ROI” says Vic Lebouthillier.

“Corporations are moving beyond their traditional role as a provider of health care benefits to develop holistic programs that pinpoint the specific health needs of their employee populations, drive employee behavior change and eliminate barriers to healthcare,” says Jim Winkler, leader of Hewitt’s health management consulting practice.

Still, in a separate survey of 30,000 employees, 74% said that, even though they felt their employer had an obligation to help them know how to use their health benefits program, only 12% felt the employer had any right to tell them how to be healthy. Based on these results, businesses need to drive home the fact that improved health is better for their employees as well as the employer. It’s a win-win situation.

Employers and employees did learn common ground when it came to future healthcare. Both surveys indicate that 95% of employees be aware of that their taking care of their health today will impact future healthcare payments. A similar percentage also be aware of the valuable of early detection and prevention when it comes to saving on healthcare expenditures.

Cost is valuable for most organizations as well. Over 80 percent of those surveyed made cost mitigation a priority for 2008, but those reductions did not involve shifting responsibility for medical care onto staff members. Although 64 percent of organizations have shifted expenditures to their staff members, only 17 percent intend  to do so in the next 3-5 years. Similarly with health reimbursement accounts, 20 percent now offer these, but only about 5 percent intend  to use them in 2008.

These survey results indicate companies are getting more proactive in helping their workers to shift behaviors and take ownership of their own health futures. This is obviously great for the well-being of workers, but also for the well-being of the companies they work for. Almost half the companies surveyed were convinced that changing health behaviors was key to enhanced work rate and cut absentee rates. Over 60 percent aim  to institute programs that help workers modify and/or sustain a healthier lifestyle. Almost of these companies will also use data and measurements to make sure their healthcare strategies meet their healthcare objectives?

It is obvious to most Americans (especially those of us in business) that health care expenditures are skyrocketing out of control. No one doubts that either the market will solve the problem OR the government will impose one on us. Managed care has failed from either a cost containment or quality of care perspective. Employers have reached the point where the expense of providing medical insurance is almost as burdensome as government regulation. It’s time for some new thinking on health care and its impact on business and vice versa. “Corporate wellness” as an operational perspective instead of merely window dressing is one way to deal effectively with rising health care expenditures.

The Insurance Delimma

The first step in correcting the concern is to realize that an employee’s health is their own responsibility. Expecting employers to provide unlimited medical insurance coverage is simply unrealistic and unreasonable. It’s time for employers (on a broad scale) to reconsider their role in offering medical insurance coverage. Instead of offering complete coverage for all workers through group plans, employers ought to start to modify the burden of health coverage to those covered.

Here’s the approach. Provide catastrophic health insurance as a group benefit to all staff members with a sizable enough deductible (say $5000 per employee) to make the expense affordable for the business. Then, allow staff members to buy their own health insurance policies (based on their own needs) and pay for them through payroll deduction with pre-tax earnings. There are numerous insurance businesses that sell individual plans on this basis. Everybody wins. Staff Members can tailor their coverage to their own needs and circumstances using their own doctors. Organizations win by stopping the endless cycle of rising costs and ever-changing plans. And when people become responsible for the expense of their own insurance, they become more attentive to their own health. Besides, if an employee is interested in working for you ONLY because your business offers great insurance benefits aren’t they telling you they’re going to cost you more money in the future?

Organize a “Wellness Culture”

Our current “sickness culture” perpetuates the health care crisis and hastens the demise of market-based solutions. By sickness culture, I mean our focus on health problems rather than on having a healthy workplace and performance culture.

So, what would a “wellness culture” look like? First, rather than paid sick days, employees might be rewarded at year’s end with an attendance bonus. Workers would be reimbursed for efficacious completion of tobacco cessation and weight-loss programs. Employers would invest in corporate memberships at local health clubs so every employee can take part. Workers would be available in-house wellness programs on a variety of concerns ranging from ergonomics to stress management. Finally, employers would commit to hiring and retaining healthy employees. Simply put, healthy employees cost less and are more productive than unhealthy ones. Applicants ought to be screened for health habits and practices that limit their productiveness and increase the likelihood of future expense. While this may seem harsh, it rewards those employees whose personal lifestyle and habits make sure the best Return on Investment by the business committing to hire, train and pay them.

Be open to “alternative and complementary” approaches

Studies published in major medical journals reveal that people who use “alternative and complementary” health modalities (including chiropractic, acupuncture, yoga and massage) are generally healthier, better educated, take fewer medications and miss fewer days from work than the average American. Since these people look for ways to stay healthy without prescription drugs and surgery, they end up being a net benefit in terms of attendance and work rate. Old prejudices in this area must be discarded in order for corporations to better work rate and increase profitability

Conclusion

Medical Care expenditures are growing at a staggering pace. Managed care is an abysmal failure. Companies are buckling under the pressure of offering health coverage to their employees. American competitiveness in the market is sagging. These times call for extraordinary solutions. It’s time for American employers to consider some out-of-the-box solutions to the health care crisis. Business wellness is an approach that is timely, achievable and reasonable given the alternatives. All options ought to be considered while we still have a chance.