Corporate Wellness Blog

Health Promotion Program directors or providers should’ve a background in wellness programming and a professional health-related degree or certification.    

They should have expertise in content areas, planning, promotion, administration, investigation, and ability to grow a wellness program and tailor the wellness program to the workplace.   

Health Promotion Program providers should’ve a quality assurance program for investigating  the effectiveness of service personnel, to assess satisfaction of participants, and for personnel training and continuing education.   

An overall policy statement should be available from directors and wellness program providers addressing the following issues –  

• Assurance of confidentiality of health data,
• referral to health and medical care for at-risk participants,
• follow-up with referred participants and those at-risk,
• health promotion program investigation on process and outcomes,
• organization of the worksite for promotion of wellness and changes in corporate culture.

A clear contract or letter of agreement for services ought to be provided.

Incentives can be used to raise participation rates, help with completion or attendance at health promotion programs, and to help individuals change or adhere to healthful behaviors.

The purpose of the incentive is to encourage employees to adopt positive behaviors or maintain an existing positive behavior.

Everybody who achieves a goal or maintains a behavior ought to receive something. Many businesses also provide incentives merely for participating in events.

Stay away from being the “best” or doing the “most.” Encouraging individuals  to be the best or doing the most promotes excessive behavior, discourages others, and creates elitism.    

The best designed incentive programs are ones which are based on achieving objectives that are attainable by most person. Recognition, acknowledgment by top management, or special privileges are examples of excellent intangible incentives.   

Wellness Program Incentive Ideas –    

• Free or Low-Cost Incentives-     

   o Certificates

   o Movie passes

   o Recognition in staff member newsletter

   o Mugs

   o Water bottles

   o Commendation from senior management

   o T-shirts

   o Hats

• Moderate Cost Incentives –     

   o Entertainment tickets

   o Sweatshirts

   o Waist packs

   o Subscriptions to health magazines

   o Fitness and health books

   o Videos

• High Cost Incentives –     

   o Week-end getaways

   o Dinner for two

   o Clocks

   o Watches

• Other Incentives –     

   o Cash

   o Gift certificates

A major concern in health promotion programming is attracting personnel to participate and maximizing participation. When introducing a health promotion program, a letter briefly explaining the health promotion program signed by the president or CEO is a great endorsement.

Utilizing posters, newsletter articles, and flyers are good means of promoting the health promotion program. Other promotional methods to consider are e-mail and announcements at staff meetings. Ask wellness committee members to recruit participants.

Once the health promotion program is kicked off you could want to provide an incentive for any worker who recruits another worker to any of the health promotion program offerings.

When selecting  a wellness program from a vendor you ought to ask the following questions –

• How many workplaces have done the health promotion program?

• What types of employee population was the wellness program offered?

• What educational materials are used?

• Will the wellness program meet the needs of employees?

• What are the techniques used to help change behaviors?

• Does the wellness program help individuals  move through stages of readiness to make health behavior changes?

• Exactly how do you market the health promotion program to employees?

• What follow-up do you provide?

• Exactly how do you make referrals for medical care or other supportive services personnel may need?

• Precisely how do you know the wellness program works?

• How do you measure participant satisfaction?

When staffing your health promotion program you need to consider whether to hire a wellness staff or contract with wellness specialists from outside your corporation.

Small and medium size workplaces don’t typically have a wellness expert on staff. If your workplace is in this category, you’ll need to contract with providers outside your business.

Large organizations have a few choices. They can hire a staff solely for the health promotion program, they can contract with outside wellness providers, or they are able to use a combination of internal staff and outside providers.

When picking  a provider some key questions in the areas of staff, health promotion program structure, process, and effectiveness need to be addressed. Each of these key questions is discussed in the following sections.

Wellness Business Staff

Health experts become wellness experts when they are trained in the full range of wellness activities. Health Promotion experts are generalists who come from a broad variety of backgrounds and schooling.

They could be nurses, dietitians, health educators, counselors, exercise physiologists, or have other backgrounds. But in addition to their main training, they know something about all wellness topics, including tobacco use, stress, exercise, and nutrition.

They also know how to engage and support people  in making and sustaining health improvements and have good people  skills.

Generally, wellness experts at workplaces fall into three wide categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.

• Health Promotion screeners introduce workforce to the wellness program, take health measurements, collect health-related information, provide initial counseling, and help workforce define for themselves what they need and want in a wellness program.

• Wellness counselors work with staff after the screening to help them develop and carry out a plan to reduce their risks and improve their health.

• Health Promotion instructors teach classes and minigroups on different health topics.

A wellness program in a small corporation may be staffed by a single staff person who fills all three roles. Bigger workplaces will use different individuals  to fill these roles.

When choosing  staff or choosing  among wellness companies, ask the following questions –

• Do prospective staff have a range of health backgrounds that’ll provide appropriate professionalise in the topics to be addressed?

• Have prospective personnel functioned well as wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and/or wellness instructors?

• Will this staff include people  from the racial and ethnic backgrounds found in your employee population?

• Is each staff member comfortable with the range of backgrounds found in your staff member population, and able to communicate effectively with the various social and educational levels of your employees?

• Do workforce have a warm, but specialist, counseling style when interacting with employees?

An annual plan for the major health promotion programs and activities is a useful management tool. This is an great wellness committee task. Very often an activity and wellness theme per month is offered to staff members.

Some businesses choose to follow a National Health Observances calendar which offers advantages.  The materials developed by these various national health businesses are very credible.  The materials are usually high quality and available free or at a nominal cost.

The corporation benefits from additional publicity that occurs in various media throughout the community related to the national observance. for planning suggestions you might want to utilize the HOPE Publications Wellness Resource Developing Guide available for free at this Web site.

A Health Risk Assessment (HRA)  is sometimes used combined with a health testing.  An Health Risk Assessment (HRA) is a computerized assessment tool which looks at an individual’s family history, health status, and lifestyle.

An Health Risk Assessment (HRA) seeks to identify precursors associated with premature death or serious disease and quantifies the probable impact for each individual.

An HRA instrument is derived from an understanding of the in a disease. Based on this understanding, useful prediction instruments can be constructed to assess the health risks of an individual. Person with a higher number of health risks tend to have more serious medical problems over time.

Drawing attention to their health risks can help patrons reduce risk factors which lead to the onset of unnecessary illness and subsequent premature death.

The questionnaire covers lifestyle habits (such as smoking, seat belt use, and exercise) and physical measures (such as cholesterol, blood pressure (BP) levels, height, and weight).

For accuracy, it is vital to obtain direct measures of blood pressure, cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol.  The Health Risk Appraisal (HRA) also provides recommendations and indicates what risks are modifiable. Types of measures to assess health risks are discussed under Screening Programs.

The impact of a health risk appraisal is much greater when it is given in-person, with immediate feedback to the customer. This also provides an opportunity to invite the customer’s participation in continuing health counseling and to gain their written consent to do pro-active outreach to them.

A health age may be computed based on the individual answers to the questionnaire and physiologic factors.  The health age might indicate the individual to be younger or older than their chronological age.

Health Risk Assessment (HRA) programs are one the most prolific kinds of wellness activities utilized by organizations. Continuing research on HRAs is examining the efficacy of this tool.

One of the big benefits of this tool is that it can provide an aggregate group report of a business and could be utilized as an investigation tool.

Detailed information is available from the Society of Prospective Medicine (www.spm.org/desc.html) who publishes a handbook on HRAs.

The most common screening performed in wellness programs is heart health assessment.

The screening can include a written heart health test, blood pressure measurement, cholesterol/HDL-cholesterol test, glucose (blood sugar), weight, educational materials specific to diet, nutrition, exercise, cholesterol, use of tobacco, and weight.

The health expert conducting the screening then provides a consultation and helps set objectives with the participant.

The backbone of wellness programming at the worksite is medical testing. It is the first major activity a corporation should do when first beginning a wellness program.

Biometric screening is often used combined with the administration of a HRA .

The most effective way to screen is to utilize a health specialist trained in wellness screening techniques and counseling to privately and individually assess participants.

This wellness professional takes a brief health history and measures blood pressure (BP) and cholesterol. With computerized cholesterol desktop analyzers, results are acquired in about four minutes.

Immediate feedback, consultation, and educational materials are provided. for those identified at-risk, follow-up appointments can be scheduled at this time.  The whole process takes about twenty minutes per individual.

The screening also provides an immediate opportunity to register participants in various health promotion programs based on their interests and identified health risks.

Biometric screening can be done each year and used to monitoring health risks within the workplace.

A biometric testing program needs to provide multiple opportunities for participation.  The service must be provided for all the various shifts of a business.  The screening program must be conducted in highly visible areas so the process could be observed.

Reluctant employees often like to be able to see what the wellness program is about before they participate. When wellness screeners are not busy, they should perform outreach going to areas where employees gather and attempt to recruit employees.

When well-planned and promoted, medical screening can attract participation rates of 60 percent to 100 percent. These high participation rates have a positive impact on upper management producing support for further health promotion programming.

Goals are broad-based statements about what the health promotion program is expected to do.  The goal of the health promotion program is to enhance the health of the individual and the corporation. Goals like mission statements provide direction in a health promotion program.   

Objectives are specific and provide a means of measurement of the wellness program to determine effectiveness. There are two kinds of goals, process and outcome.    

Process objectives state the activities that need to occur to achieve a desired outcome.

Examples of process objectives are –

• Number of participants screened

• Number of participants in and completing wellness programs

• Satisfaction of health promotion program participants

• Number of participants who were medically referred and saw their physician

• Number of promotional activities

• Number of participants seen in follow-up

Example of outcome goals are –

• Number of participants who improved fitness level

• Number of participants who lowered cholesterol level

• Number of participants who lost weight, body fat

• Number of participants who quit use of tobacco

• Number of participants with high blood pressure who lowered their blood pressure

• Number of participants whose initial level of alcohol consumption put them at-risk who are no longer at-risk

• Number of participants with risk factors who saw their doctor and are being treated for high blood pressure (BP) or cholesterol years later