Startinging a Employer Wellness Program

Employee Wellness Programs start and end with individual health. Individuals, after all, are able to make decisions about maintaining and / or improving their health and wellbeing. Employee Employee Wellness Programs must therefore provide the tools and resources required to assist and motivate individuals to actively participate in the program.

Individual health is only one part of starting staff member Employee Wellness Programs. Below you’ll find some things to assist you in your efforts to create a healthy atmosphere for you and your coworkers.

Encouraging Your Employer to Start an Employer Wellness Program

This is the first step in starting a Employee Wellness Program. In recent times more and more organizations are starting to see the value of promoting and supporting the health of their staff members. 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 Employee Wellness Programs
•    Suggestions on where to start
•    Tools like surveys and evaluation forms

These resources are for both organizations and staff members to lead the development and assess the effectiveness of their new Employee Wellness Program. Provide it to your employer as a place to start or read it yourself and present your ideas.

Participating in Employee Wellness Programs

Once you have an staff member Employer Wellness Program established, participating fully in all phases of the program is important. Many of us know that we need to more actively engage in Employee 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 staff member Employee Wellness Program:
•    Review the offerings that interest you and that you need for health  improvement.
•    Schedule time to go to the presentation 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 Employee Wellness Programs that might be available to you at work:
•    ergonomic evaluations and ergonomic training classes
•    lactation rooms and classes
•    prenatal education program
•    quiet rooms for relaxation
•    stress management programs
•    onsite fitness centers
•    chair massage
•    nutrition education
•    workplace primary medical care services
•    child care facility or resources and referral service
•    smoking cessation programs parenting classes
•    Senior care resources and referral service
•    cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose screening programs
•    flu shots
•    weight management and / or weight loss programs
•    medical care consumerism programs
•    employee assistance programs
•    health coaching
•    onsite mobile mammography

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