We’re starting an Employee Wellness Program at work and I’ve quite happily applied to be a member of the Wellness Committee.

My Interest

Improving quality of life is something very near and dear to me, and I feel quite passionate about it. Ever since I realized that my weight gain was not going to reverse itself and I would need to actually go out of my way to take control of my health, I’ve been avidly interested in a variety of health-related topics.

For one thing, I’ve learned to cook, which I’d have told you in years past would never come to pass. They started a snowball fight in hell the day I started eating tomatoes.

Research

We’ve got our first Wellness Committee meeting on Friday, which I will miss because I’ll be dressed up in Steampunk garb and learning how to fly airships and decorate tophats at Teslacon.

In a mild panic over what important and glorious meeting details I might miss (those of you familiar with corporate meetings are more than welcome to scoff at that), I took it upon myself to become familiar with Employee Wellness Programs.

In my usual fashion, I’m sure I’ve overdone the research bit.

Work vs Community

I’ll be using terms like “Employee” and “Managerial Staff” and soforth below—I don’t see any reason whatsoever that one couldn’t create a Wellness Group within a community outside of a work setting. Some of the concepts may be invalid (particularly the bits about Health Insurance) but if you replace “managers” with “group leaders” and “employees” with “group members” I don’t see why it couldn’t port over without drastic changes.

What is a Wellness Committee?

Answer: Whatever you want it to be!

Less Annoyingly Vague Answer: A group dedicated to helping its members get healthy.

The reason the real answer is vague is because “healthy” and “wellness” are, themselves, awfully vague terms. Would you say that … oh, I dunno, “Credit Management” classes are part of a Wellness Committee? Maybe not? Well, what about “Stress Management”? Sound a little better? Okay, what if you find out that many of your group members are stressed about their finances? Offering “Credit Management” classes would positively impact the stress levels of your group members.

So it’s vague.

Furthermore, it’s well worth noting that it’s not just “eat vegetables and hop on a treadmill.”

Each Wellness Program should be different because each group is different. You have to take into account the agendas of leadership AND the needs and desires of the group members.

Step 1: Find Out What Risk Factors are Prevalent

(Well, technically Step 1 should be deciding you want a Wellness Program, but we’ll assume you’re at least interested, or you’d have clicked past this blog post by now)

From a workplace standpoint, this means assessing the risks of the employees.

Evaluate male vs female employees. If you’re primarily female, focusing on prostate exams may be less useful than breast cancer leaflets.

Evaluate age of employees. If you’ve got an older staff, they might be more interested in heart health programs than in pre-natal care groups.

If you can, get some aggregate health data via a health assessment. A voluntary employee fasting exam can be done on-site and can evaluate blood sugar levels, BMI, heart health, and a ton of other things. If you find that the majority of your staff is overweight with dangerous fasting glucose levels, perhaps some talks about diabetes.

Smoking cessation programs are useless if most of your employees are already smoke-free.

The purpose of this step is to generate TARGETS. Until you know what your enemy is, what your goal is, you’ll have difficulties measuring your success or obtaining participation.

Step 2: What Does Senior Management Want the Program to Achieve?

Again, if this is a community thing, you’d be evaluating what the group leaders are seeking. One of the problems with something as vague as “wellness” is creating a vision of what you’re trying to achieve.

If your leadership is just looking to cut costs and nothing else, they won’t be likely to smile upon a program that encourages employees to dig up the soil out back and establish little vegetable gardens on company property.

Senior management may be interested in cutting health care costs, boosting employee retention, encouraging self-care, upholding company image and culture, boosting morale, or the long-term health of their employees.

You’ll also run into conflicts within your committee leadership, with everyone having different opinions on what is most important and which programs should be prioritized.

Know your goals before you start. Write them down with a vision statement, such as the following:

To continuously provide and promote programs that encourage, educate, and support members and dependents to make healthy mental, physical, and financial lifestyle choices.

Constantly evaluate ideas against that vision statement. Note that the above statement is pretty forgiving. What to organize a kayaking trip to Canada? How about a coupon-clipping club? If you add “accessible” to the description of the programs, all the sudden kayaking doesn’t work: it’s not accessible to people who can’t afford the trip, even if they wanted to go.

You may have to sell your managerial staff on wellness. If they don’t understand why the program would be a benefit for the company, it will be much more difficult to get support and funding for projects. Make sure that your management knows WHY this is important (speak in dollars, if necessary … it’s possible to reduce health insurance premiums through a wellness program) and also make sure they know how effective it is. Give regular reports on programs, success rates, and participation.

Step 3: Find Out What Your Members Want

Ask people what types of programs they might actually participate in.

If you’ve got over half of your employees who are smoking but you poll them and all of them tell you they’re not interested in a smoking cessation program, you’d be wasting time and resources to build a big program on it. (You can still do little things, particularly if you’re looking to lower costs and your insurance company offers boosts to employees who aren’t smokers)

Poll your group members. Moreover, do it often, possibly every couple of months. Certainly don’t poll once, at the outset of your group, and then never again. Not only will your membership change over that time period, people themselves may change, and their interests along with it.

Look at your data and focus on programs that people are interested in which also mesh with leadership goals.

Step 4: Evaluate How Much Money and Time You Have

Some companies will offer a budget to their Wellness Committees. Will the company fund printouts? Will the company consider subsidizing Health Club memberships, or offering smoking cessation rebates? Will the company buy pedometers or offer dirtspace for employee gardens? Will the company build a mini “health club” and buy equipment to stock it?

Every group will have different funding, and that funding will limit what programs the group can undertake.

If you are working under restricted funding (and you probably are) be extra careful when deciding which programs to spend money on to get the most bang for your buck. Go for programs with measurable results that will make the leadership happy, in the hopes that they’ll boost the funding for the following budget cycle, opening doors for new and better programs.

In addition to money, you have to take time into account.

If your company won’t give on-the-clock time for programs, you’ll be limited to lunch programs, break programs, or outside-of-work meetings. You may be able to get permission from the company to combine two 15 minute breaks into a single “group walking” break—you never know until you ask, but you should be prepared to accept time constraints and work within them.

As part of this, find out what your company is already doing. Do you have an EAP? How much of the company’s budget is already allocated to health insurance? How much is the burden of the employee? What increases have there been recently? Does the health insurance offer any bonuses (such as a Healthy Eating Rebate) which employees may be unaware of?

Checklist

• Get support from leadership
• Create a cohesive team, with a clear goal
• Collect enough information to drive your efforts
• Craft an opening plan
• Choose appropriate programs
• Create a supportive environment
• Carefully evaluate the outcome

Sample Programs

• Random Acts of Kindness
• Good Night – Sleep programs
• Smart Shopping – Read labels
• Easy Cooking – simple recipes for the fry pan impaired
• Vegetable 101 – Don’t fear our leafy friends
• 100 Miles in 100 Days – group of walkers with pedometers
• Fast Food Guide
• Bulge Busters – A support group for folks losing weight and keeping it off
• Credit Counseling
• Personal Finance
• Parenting
• Time-management
• Elder care
• Smoking cessation
• Nutrition
• Assertiveness training
• Living wills
• Prenatal care
• Stress Reduction
• Wellness Libraries – for self-study
• White Noise machines for cubicle areas, to reduce stress
• Allergy Alleviation
• Healing Your Body With Food
• Fad Diets
• Sticking With Exercise
• Spring Tune-Up
• Company property gardens
• Sit for 60, Move for 3
• Wellness newsletters

Focus on baby steps and small changes rather than giant lifestyle changes. Build an activity menu that people can choose what they’d like to participate in.

Rewards

Rewards can be good motivators, but only if they are appropriate. One case study I read discussed how they began with cash rebates and even tried point-value rewards based on overall participation, but these ultimately failed.

Smoking cessation rewards only rewarded smokers, and it was found that smoking typically resumed after the cash reward was given.

Point value rewards focused on rewarding those employees who were already healthy without providing impetus for unhealthy employees to become healthier.

The study concluded by saying that offering health insurance cost reduction to participants was the most effective reward they used.

Focus

Whether to offer a single meeting/presentation on a topic or to have a focused battle plan over a longer time period is up to you, but it’s worth noting that a supportive program over a longer time period is more likely to build new behaviors than a single powerpoint presentation.

For example, you may choose to have a three-month focus on stress reduction. You may have paycheck stuffers, handouts, and fliers to build awareness, have an opening meeting to discuss the importance of handling stress well and go over some stress reduction techniques. After that, you may have regular meetings to discuss new techniques, assign “homework”, discuss difficulties or successes, and encourage those on track to stay on track and build healthy habits.

Sleep Tips

Okay, this derails the post, but I did the research, so I want to include it.

As part of a program which promoted a healthy night’s sleep, the following tips are recommended:

• Maintain consistent sleep and wake time schedules (even over the weekend!)
• Establish a relaxing bedtime routine, such as a bath, a good book, listening to soothing music.
• Create a cool/dark/quiet/comfortable sleep environment
• The bedroom should not be a family activity room.
• Finish eating, exercising, nicotine, drinking alcohol, and caffeine (coffee, tea, chocolate, and soda) a few hours before bedtime. All of those activities can reduce sleep quality
• Exercise regularly

Done!

(Finally!)

So that’s my research into Wellness Programs. One of the things I found most interesting was the variety in topics that can be run as part of a Wellness Program. I’m a firm believer in the power of taking baby steps to develop healthy habits and I’m very excited to see what direction this committee takes at work.

Has anyone had any experience with Wellness Programs, either at work or through some other group?

 

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