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

Encouraging Your Employer to Start an Corporate Health and Wellness Program

This is the first step in creating a Corporate Health and Wellness Program. In recent times more and more companies are creating 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 Corporate Health and Wellness Programs

•         Suggestions on where to start

•         Tools like surveys and evaluation forms

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

Taking Part in Corporate Health and Wellness Programs

Once you have an worker Corporate 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 Corporate Health and 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 Corporate Health and Wellness Program:

•         Review the offerings that interest you and that you need for health  improvement.

•         Schedule time to go to the seminar 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 Corporate Health and Wellness Programs that might be available to you at work:

•         ergonomic evaluations and training classes

•         lactation rooms and classes

•         prenatal education program

•         quiet rooms for relaxation

•         stress management programs

•         fitness facilities

•         chair massage

•         healthy eating education

•         worksite primary medical care services

•         child care facility or resources and referral service

•         smoking cessation programs parenting classes

•         elder care resource and referral service

•         cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose screening programs

•         flu vaccination

•         weight management programs

•         medical care consumerism programs

•         work/life programs

•         wellness coach / health coach programs

•         onsite mammography

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

In an era of rising medical care costs and fierce competition, companies have a vested interest in the health of their workers.  Research has found that, on average, workers with healthy behaviors (such as not using tobacco or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower medical care expenses, are absent from work less frequently, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than workers with unhealthy behaviors.

Corporate Health and Wellness Program: Securing Leadership Support

Corporate Health and Wellness Program support from the highest level of upper management is essential to your success in creating a culture of wellness within your workplace. Look for Corporate Health and Wellness Program support from a leader who is respected by and can sway other leaders. (It’s not important that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Corporate Health and Wellness Program.) You will be relying on this culture-of-health champion to advocate for changes that you recommend and to ensure the organization allocates adequate Corporate Health and Wellness Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the workplace policies, physical environment, and social norms.

Capture Corporate Health and Wellness Program Staff and Financing

Starting and maintaining a Corporate Health and Wellness Program within your organization needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your organization is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Corporate Health and Wellness Program.  There are a number of ways to find an individual with the needed skills to guide and support your organization’s Corporate Health and Wellness Program.

Starting facilities and Corporate Health and Wellness Program policies, such as those allowing workers to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be expensive, but it does require adequate and sustained financing.  If possible, include the creation of a workplace environment that supports the Corporate Health and Wellness Program as a permanent component of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your organization.

Worker Involvement in the Corporate Health and Wellness Program

Pulling together a cross section of workers to advise your organization’s Corporate Health and Wellness Program ensures that improvements in workplace facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of workers.   In addition, these workers can support as the front-line Corporate Health and Wellness Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.

Develop a Corporate Health and Wellness Program Vision and “Brand”

A Corporate Health and Wellness Program vision and a brand are powerful first steps in turning a Corporate Health and Wellness Program from an idea to a reality. What would you like your workplace environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Corporate Health and Wellness Program vision statement summarizes for all (workers and leaders alike) the reasons for creating a Corporate Health and Wellness Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between worker health and your organization’s ability to achieve its overall mission.  

Branding your organization’s Corporate Health and Wellness Program conveys to workers that the organization’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Choose a Corporate Health and Wellness Program name and logo that resonate with workers. Then use that brand on all Corporate Health and Wellness Program communications with workers about the policies, facilities and programs your organization offers to promote healthy behaviors.

Evaluate Your Existing Corporate Health and Wellness Program Situation

Exactly how your organization establishes a Corporate Health and Wellness Program that encourages healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your organization and employee population. 

Evaluate how the current workplace facilities, policies, and unwritten norms support — or discourage — healthy behaviors.

Gather information on the health and health-related behaviors of your employee population.  The most common method is by using a validated health risk assessment. If you don’t have data specific to your workers, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data.  Note: Information on workers’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.

Establish Corporate Health and Wellness Program Goals and Priorities

Use what you’ve learned about the health of the employees and about your current workplace environment to determine your organization’s Corporate Health and Wellness Program priorities. From those Corporate Health and Wellness Program priorities, define clear and measurable Corporate Health and Wellness Program objectives for improving the health of the employees and your organization’s culture. Well written objectives will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.

Choose Corporate Health and Wellness Program Strategies

Focus your organization’s Corporate Health and Wellness Program resources (time, energy and money) on strategies that are most likely to produce results:  a rise in healthy eating, a rise in physical activity, and a reduction in tobacco use. There’s no need to guess at what might work. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of studies and has identified the Corporate Health and Wellness Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Corporate Health and Wellness Program strategies are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.

The formula for Corporate Health and Wellness Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.

Implement Corporate Health and Wellness Program Strategies

Once you’ve chosen your Corporate Health and Wellness Program Strategies, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline.  The “right” amount of time for implementing each Corporate Health and Wellness Program strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your organization.  Work plans keep your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to create a Corporate Health and Wellness Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.

Communicate and Educate About the Corporate Health and Wellness Program

Ensure workers are aware of the Corporate Health and Wellness Program opportunities you’ve provided.   Planning your Corporate Health and Wellness Program communications allows you to communicate regularly with workers without overwhelming them at any one time.

Monitor and Report Your Corporate Health and Wellness Program Results

At the same time that you plan your Corporate Health and Wellness Program Strategies, think about how you’ll measure success.  It’s much easier to gather information – or to create systems for collecting information — before you implement a Corporate Health and Wellness Program strategy rather than as an afterthought.   Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in worker morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in rates of absenteeism or medical care claims.

Report both your Corporate Health and Wellness Program successes in building a healthy workplace environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides workers time for walking during the workday), and Corporate Health and Wellness Program successes in getting workers to take charge of their health (a rise in the number of workers who contacted the stop-smoking program, or a rise in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).