Health Wellness ProgramHealth and Wellness Programs and Wellness Program Consulting

As with any program, the two most important elements for the success of your wellness program are management support & employee participation.  Senior Leadership sets the vision and arranges the resources from which action plans flow.  Genuine support from senior personnel also lends credibility to the wellness plan.  It is important that management be visible supporters and role models for your Corporate Wellness Program.

workers need to be involved on several levels so that they feel ownership of the wellness program.  Workers are the program stakeholders!  All workers must have an opportunity to provide input and feedback through needs & interest surveys and program evaluation tools.  The information gathered must be used to plan programs that target those needs and interests to ensure participation, buy-in, and reinforcement.

There are several methods to identify employee needs and interests such as:

• Holding Employee Focus Groups
• Talking About Wellness Interests During Department meetings
• Distributing and Analyzing a Needs & Interest Survey
• (Including|Allowing for|Making sure to include} a Time to Give Opinions on Each Assessment Tool  

Any one or combination of several techniques will be sure that the wellness program meets what staff members want.

Step 3 supplies additional information on determining wellness program needs.  But first, establishing a Workplace Wellness Program Committee can help you involve senior staff & staff members, determine need, and plan your wellness program.

A key to a successful Worksite Health Promotion Program requires management commitment and employee participation.

Worksite Health Promotion Program Step 2: Form a Worksite Health Promotion Program Committee

An active Employee Wellness Program Committee sees to employee participation, supplies buy-in, management reinforcement, and maintains a team that is ready to take action to launch wellness programs.

Company Wellness Program Step 3: Gather Data to Determine Key Needs and Expectations

The next vital component is to base the Company Wellness Program on the needs and interests of your corporation and its workers.

Employee Wellness Program Step 4: Create Goals and Objectives

Goals and objectives are the maps to guide you where your program needs to go.   These constitute the foundation for planning and evaluating activities to ensure that your wellness program will meet your special needs.

Worksite Wellness Program Step 5: Establish a Detailed Action Plan

There is no such thing as too much planning!  The best of intentions can get lost, overstepped, or forgotten withoutadequate planning, and then it would be all for naught.

Workplace Wellness Program Step 6: Choose and Launch a Plan

Once you have the needs assessment data, a Company Health Promotion Program Committee, objectives it’s now time to start your plan!

Worksite Wellness Program Step 7: Monitor and Assess Your Worksite Wellness Program

Evaluation is an important step to keep a program on target, as well as to see that the program is reaching its objectives or achieving the desired outcome.

Summary

These Seven Steps outline considerations for a comprehensive approach to implementing an effective wellness program.  Are you able to implement components of wellness activities without referring to these steps?  Yes, of course, but you may lack the sustainability or ability to see desired outcomes.  Following the Seven Steps need not be complicated or burdensome.  A very simple approach can achieve a efficacious wellness program!

Therefore, to ensure a successful wellness program refer to the key components as you plan your program or better your current program:

• Senior Leadership Support & Employee Involvement
• Active Company Health Promotion Program Committee
• Workplace Wellness Program is Based on Employee Needs & Interests
• Workplace Wellness Program Goals and Objectives are Established
• Detailed Employee Health Promotion Program Action Plan Based upon Resources & Budget
• Corporate Wellness Program Implementation & Internal Marketing
• Assessment of Workplace Wellness Program Outcomes

The program design options depend on the goals/objectives and desired outcomes of your program.  If your intention is to help workers make a change behavior, decrease risk factors, or save healthcare money then your wellness program would be designed to accomplish those outcomes and a budget would be significant to support that design.  

There are different wellness program design levels depending on desired outcomes and budgets.  Each level has advantages and disadvantages.  The intentions or results are quite different, are not interchangeable in terms of obtaining similar results, and therefore ought not be confused.  For example, planning activities such as an employee health & wellness fair or lunchtime education sessions, or having pamphlets available do not usually result in behavior change, but may increase awareness on a topic.  If the goal is behavior change then a different design is required, such as Lifestyle/Behavior Change Programs and Company Support.  The outline below outlines the wellness design levels with a short explanation.

Awareness Programs:  At this level a business makes health information available and accessible to staff members.  This type of program often includes pamphlets on a variety of topics, wellness articles in newsletters, bulletin board displays, e-mail health messages, etc.   Also, most wellness fairs are designed as awareness programs with vendors providing information and providing health screenings to staff members.  

Awareness programs are inexpensive and do not require extensive employee or organization time commitments.  However, these programs do not usually yield behavior change.  Growing awareness isn’t usually sufficient to generate lifestyle changes for most people, unless used to innervate staff members to register for a program being available at the organization or community on the topic.  An example of this would be providing information on the deleterious effects of smoking and inviting staff members who use tobacco to register for a tobacco cessation class.

Education Programs:  Educational programs frequently offer more information on a topic and usually also provide time for Q & A, but are similar to awareness programs.  An example is lunch-n-learn sessions on a health related topic.  These cost the organization a little more than awareness programs; however, they remain inexpensive and do not require a whole lot of time for planning or attending a session.  Again, building awareness and offering information may not lead to the desired behavior change unless ongoing backing or incentives/rewards are also planned.

Lifestyle/Behavior Change Programs:  These programs are designed as 4 to 12 weekly sessions or courses to offer health and wellbeing education, address barriers and offer opportunities to practice the desired skills.  Behavior change programs therefore require more business resources, cost more, and also require more employee responsibility, time and effort.  The results are often the desired beneficial lifestyle change, which if sustained may lead to potential cost savings.  

Examples include smoking cessation classes, weight loss and weight management meetings, or an ongoing exercise program.

Environmental and Employer Support:  Environmental backing is often considered the highest and most valuable level to include when beginning your wellness program in order to support and maintain healthy behaviors.  These types of design options include policy changes such as:

• Creating a tobacco-free workplace
• Designating a walking path,
• Securing workplace fitness centers,
• Ensuring healthy snack machines selections,
• Offering healthy meal choices in the cafeteria, and/or
• Creating flex-time policies.  

Other examples include subsidizing healthy vending machines or cafeteria choices; reimbursing gym or weight loss and weight management program memberships; or offering insurance incentives and rewards for healthy behaviors.

Ideally, the wellness program design would include some of all of these options.  The more integrated the approach, the more efficacious the results will be.  By way of example, a business can have tobacco cessation information available; can schedule a one hour awareness session on the harmful effects of smoking and how to quit; can enable an workplace tobacco cessation program, supply self quit smoking kits, or support staff members to go to a community program; and/or on an environmental backing level can establish a tobacco-free workplace and grounds, offer reduced health insurance for non-smokers, or offer pharmacological quit smoking aids for free.

Employee Wellness Program: Components for Success

There are many main parts that have to be considered to see to the success of your Workplace Wellness Program or Workplace Wellness Program.  These include:  

• Senior Leadership Reinforcement & Employee Participation
• Active Worksite Wellness Program Committee
• Program is Based on Employee Needs & Interests
• Goals and Objectives are Established
• Detailed Action Plan Based upon Resources & Budget
• Program Implementation & Internal Marketing
• Evaluation of Outcomes and Program

Major benefits of healthy workers include:

• Decreased Medical Care costs
• Lowered Injuries
• Reduced Rates of Absenteeism
• Boosted Morale and Loyalty
• Increased Productivity
• Lowered Use of Health Care Benefits
• Lowered Workers’ Comp/Disability
• Positive Image in Community
• Diminished Turnover
• Improved recruitment for able employees

What is NOT Having a Workplace Health Promotion Program Costing Your Business?  

Consider the health risk factors that are contributing to chronic diseases for adults:

• 59% of adults are overweight or obese
• Greater than 60% of American adults do not get regular exercise
• More than 75% of adults do not consume the minimum recommendations for fruits and vegetables
• Cardiovascular disease is the leading common cause of death and the leading cause of death in smokers
• 26 percent of staff members stated they were often or very often burned out or stressed by their work  

Healthcare expenses are Rising:  Healthcare costs are at a record high of $1.7 trillion with no signs of leveling out, let alone decreasing.  The average expense of yearly medical care spending is over $5,000 per person and with dependents almost $10,000.  Recent data shows that medical care related expenses now cost North Carolina organizations thousands of dollars per employee, each year.

Most Illnesses Can Be Avoided:  Although it sounds unrealistic, experts insist that avoidable illness makes up 60% – 70% of the entire burden of illness in the U.S..   In North Carolina, it is estimated that more than 53% of all deaths are avoidable, and that 2/3 of all avoidable deaths are due to tobacco use, physical inactivity, and poor diet.

Stress Levels are On the Rise:  As business resources dwindle and organizations adopt less-costly work practices, the effects of absenteeism and productivity lost have a more powerful effect.  In a new nationwide poll, 78 percent of Americans described their jobs as stressful, and most felt that stress levels have increased over The previous decade.  In addition, high levels of business stress can negatively affect a business by increasing injuries, absenteeism, and health care costs while decreasing productivity.  Simple solutions such as stress management education, flexible work schedules, quality social interaction, and increased participation in business decision-making can better stress levels in the workplace.

What is the Initial Cost and Time Investment for a Worksite Health Promotion Program?

The expenditure is dependent upon the type of Company Wellness Program implemented.  There are several options to promote employee health with advantages and disadvantages of each.  The program design is dependent upon the goals and objectives of the wellness program, the employer resources, and the neighborhood resources available.  

Enhancing dietary practices, expanding physical activity levels, managing stress or addressing work life balance problems, and reducing/eliminating tobacco use, are primary strategies for preventing many of the most common avoidable chronic diseases. The possibilities of how your company deals with these problems are endless and can range from expanding employee awareness, which may include purchasing a few handouts on a variety of topics, and quantifying walking distances around your facility, to instituting company support such as funding a full-time occupational health consultant or building an onsite fitness center.  

When well-planned and based on your goals and objectives, any of these programs have the potential to help you succeed.  Refer below to Corporate Wellness Program Design Options for additional ideas.

A Workplace Wellness Program is an all-inclusive program to assist and support workers in implementing healthier lifestyles.  This can include increasing employee awareness on health topics, scheduling behavior modification programs, and/or implementing employer policies that support health-related objectives.  Programs and policies that promote increased physical exercise, tobacco use prevention and cessation, and healthy diet selections are a few examples.  

Dimensions of Wellness

Wellness is more than physical fitness.  In addition to physical fitness, the dimensions of optimal health include:

   • Spiritual Dimension of Wellness,
   • Emotional Wellness,
   • Social Wellness,
   • Intellectual Dimension of Wellness

These dimensions are frequently portrayed as a “life wheel” with examples of health components that include fitness, diet, purpose in life, financial planning, social connections & support systems, stress management, mind-body health, career planning and continued learning.   The key to personal health is keeping the “life wheel” in balance.  A all-inclusive workplace wellness program addresses most, if not all, of these dimensions.

Why Company Wellness Programs?

staff members invest a great deal of time on the job, and the reality is that our traditional work-week is increasing.  In fact, the everyday American now is at work about 47 hours per week.  In addition, items such as modems, laptop computers, cell phones, voice and email have confused the line between life and work.  These realities cut down on the amount of time that the average worker is able to devote to health and wellbeing pursuits, and yet staff members are expected to be extremely efficient when at work.

A current study from the American Association of Occupational Health Nurses saw that workplace wellness or Worksite Health Promotion Programs are efficacious in helping workers to make positive health changes due to several factors such as convenience, environmental reinforcement, and co-worker or social acceptance.  

What’s the Connection between Wellness and the Workplace?

Programs and policies that reward healthy behaviors are able to make a big difference on employee wellness AND influence the business’s bottom line.  Studies show that for each dollar invested by employers in Workplace Health Promotion Programs/wellness programs, there were savings ranging from $1.49 to $4.91 with a average savings of $3.14*.  In business vocabulary, that’s more than a 3:1 minimum ROI – a number that is hard to disregard, and a best practice that ought to draw serious consideration from employers.  In fact, a Workplace Health Promotion Program literature review published in Health Promotion Practitioner Journal saw:

   • 19 research studies found a 28.3% decrease in sick leave
   • 16 studies demonstrated a 5.6:1 return on investment
   • 23 showed a 26.1% decline in health care costs
   • 4 observed a 30 percent decrease in direct medical and workers’ compensation claims

There is little doubt that a comprehensive wellness program optimized to meet an enterprise’s specific needs can save money by lowering absenteeism, lowering healthcare costs, lowering employee turnover, and building productiveness.

• The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 2003