Incentives promote workers to adopt positive behaviors or maintain an existing positive behavior that may potentially help the employee stay healthy and live longer. Adopting positive health behavior is fundamentally what wellness is about.

Incentives can be used to boost participation rates, help people complete a Worksite Health Promotion Program, or help people modify or adhere to healthy behaviors. Providing incentives and rewards and rewards will send an significant message to the workers that your organization is committed to assisting them with working on their health. It also plays a significant role in motivating people to take part.

Tips on how to choose appropriate incentives/rewards:

• Ascertain through an employee survey what incentives they value.
• Ascertain what incentives/rewards the organization can support as well as what the budget will allow.
• Ensure that every attendant who achieves a goal receives some recognition.
• Avoid offering incentives for the “best” or the “most.”
• Avoid using food as a reward.
• Use incentives/rewards to promote your Company Wellness Program, through logos and branding.

When developing a accross the board Worksite Wellness Program, make sure that it consists of a variety of awareness, lifestyle shift, supportive environment programs, policies and activities that target risk behaviors, and the needs and interests of the staff members. It will be valuable to review and revise existing policies governing such areas as smoking sections and the employee cafeteria.

Tips on beginning a Corporate Wellness Program:

• Design activities based on your planned goals approaching the specific needs of your workers. Focus on those subject matters that are of greatest interest to your workers and the greatest needs of your company, in that order. Avoid subject matters with narrow appeal.
• Keep it simple. Design the Workplace Wellness Program so it’s easy for the participants to know and track.
• Integrate a combination of activities to include awareness, educational, and behavior elements.
• Identify activities in which every employee can take part.

Ideas for your Worksite Wellness Program:

• Challenges. Activities that focus on practicing a desired behavior that continues for 4-8 weeks and focuses on specific issues (such as physical activity, diet, or stress management).
• Learning experiences. This includes sessions, videos, and classes.
• Behavior changes (such as smoking cessation). You may or may not offer interventions at the workplace. Nevertheless, you ought to advocate people to make lifestyle changes that they want to make even without an external incentive.
• Education on disease management. For example, support and education groups for diabetes, elevated Blood Pressure, etc.
• Learing new skills. By way of example, CPR and first aid.
• Preventive screenings like Blood Pressure (BP), cholesterol, and vision.

Source: Adapted from the Building Healthy Texans Job Site Wellness Toolkit.

Design objectives and goals

Goals are general instructions that explain what you want to achieve. Objectives define strategies or steps to take to attain the identified goal.

A wellness program should have a “destination”. Use the outcome of your surveys and your wellness committee’s mission statement as guides. Consider these ideas:

• Focus on making health information and learning resources readily available to workers
• Focus on group activities so workers can work together to support and bolster healthier lifestyles
• Establish a wellness program that is visible to both workers and to your customers
• Focus on written policies and standard procedures
• Set objectives for your wellness program.

Review Guidelines for Writing Goals.

Goals Should Be

Specific – A intention is specific when it provides a description of what will be accomplished. It will state exactly what the employer intends to accomplish. It should be written so that it can be easily and clearly communicated. A specific intention will make it easier for those writing objectives and action plans to address the following questions:

• Who is to be involved?
• What is to be accomplished?
• Where is it to be done?
• When is it to be done?

Measurable – A objective is measurable if it is quantifiable. To determine if your objective is measurable, ask questions such as: How much? How many? How will I know when it is accomplished?

Attainable – You can attain most any goal you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable.

Realistic – Realistic, means “do-able.” The intention needs to be realistic for your business and where the business is at the moment. A intention to take out all the high fat items in the snack machines may not be realistic for your business right now; a better intention would be to substitute some of the chips, candy bars and pies for pretzels, yogurt and dried fruit.

Timely – Finally, a goal must have a timeframe: for next week, in three months, by age 35. It must have a starting and ending point. It must also have some intermediate points at which progress can be assessed. Limiting the time in which a goal must be accomplished helps to focus effort toward its performance. If you don’t set a time, the responsibility is too vague. It tends not to happen because you feel you can begin at any time. Without a time limit, there’s no urgency to begin taking action now.

Successful wellness programs are designed to meet the needs and interests of the employees. Ask employees what they are interested in, and what needs they have. People are more willing to take part and support wellness efforts if they are involved in the decision-making process.

When developing a survey, keep the following hints in mind:

• Ask mostly closed form questions, especially if you will be sending the survey to a sizable number of staff members. Closed form questions support specific choices and are easy to tabulate.
• Invite comments, opinions and recommendations, or ask open-ended questions at the end of the survey. Open-ended items are more difficult to summarize.
• Include a brief explanatory cover letter with the survey with the signature of the corporation president. Make sure to include a statement about confidentiality and anonymity.
• Ask a group of representative workers to review the survey before it is distributed. Find out if the questions will be understood by workers and won’t be objected to.
• Include demographic information at the beginning, or end of the survey (gender, age, shift, site, department, etc.).
• Conduct a random drawing for a valued incentive item for all those who returned the survey. This might increase the response rate.

One rule to consider concerning surveys is if you have fewer than 500 workers, everyone should receive one. The benefit of everyone receiving a survey can be significant. If you have over 500 workers, a sample of the work population from each department will suffice. The higher the response, the more valid and reliable the outcome. A minimum response of 40% to 50% is considered significant.

A vital first step in organizing your company’s wellness program is the formation of a Corporate Wellness Program Committee. The focus of the Corporate Wellness Program Committee is to plan, reward, and enable the program. The Corporate Wellness Program Committee establishes continuity, motivation, and broad ownership of the program as well as provides an excellent vehicle for communication.

So who ought to be on the Employee Wellness Program Committee? Consider appointing the following people/departments to your Employee Wellness Program Committee:

• Senior Leadership within your company
• Union representatives
• Human Resources (HR) department
• EAP
• Information technology
• Communications
• Health and safety department
• employees interested in wellness and health

Building a successful Employee Wellness Program requires employee time as well as money. Some larger companies may spend 20 hours per week for three to six months preparing all the steps prior to initiating a Employee Wellness Program.

Anywhere from 4 to 10 people meeting monthly equals a Employee Wellness Program Committee. A mission statement for the Employee Wellness Program Committee must be developed by the second meeting. This way, everyone knows what the Employee Wellness Program Committee is working toward.

Once a wellness program has been established, the committee’s size and meeting schedule may change. Still, no fewer than 4 members must meet at least quarterly so the group – and the wellness program – does not fade away.

Support from upper management is essential to building a efficacious wellness program! Visible upper management reinforcement is one of the most vital factors in the success of a worksite Employee Wellness Program. Management executives are responsible for making sure that the organization meets its objectives. They can offer additional assistance by supporting you to link your Employee Wellness Program objectives to organization outcomes, thereby positioning Employee Wellness Program as a fundamental part of the organization.

It is important to foster support and excitement for the program from all echelons of the corporation including upper management, mid-level management, and grass-root staff members.

The challenge for any Employee Wellness Program coordinator is convincing senior staff about the potential value of Employee Wellness Program to the company and conceptualizing how Employee Wellness Program initiatives can impact the company in a meaningful manner. The American Journal of Health Promotion is a great resource to assist you with obtaining convincing information on the benefits of a Employee Wellness Program.

Workplace Health Promotion Program reinforcement from management can come in a myriad of different ways:

• Involvement in the wellness program planning process
• Distribution of funding for the wellness program
• Support for time given to the wellness program
• Participation in wellness programs
• Administration by management, such as the distribution of a letter of reinforcement for the program.
• Flexibility of employee schedules to accommodate wellness activities

The first step in beginning your wellness/Employee Wellness Program is to be aware of your organization and how Employee Wellness Program will fit into the current structure. By researching your organization’s history with similar programs and eliciting feedback from co-staff members, you can discover the best solution for your organization.

Company Health Promotion Program: Research Questions

• Find out if Worksite Health Promotion Program has been done in the past. If so, what worked and what did not?
• Was it widely accepted?
• Was programming efficacious? Why or why not?
• What does your corporation hope to gain from launching a Worksite Health Promotion Program?

Answers to these questions will help you start the process of creating a culture of wellness within your employer. It is imperative that you assess the environment before starting a program.

The costs of healthcare have been rising more than ten percent each year for several years. A substantial amount of the money invested in the healthcare system treats costly illnesses and diseases.

• Approximately 95 percent of the $1.4 trillion that we spend as a nation on health goes to direct healthcare services, while about 5 percent is allocated to preventing disease and promoting health.
• Potentially, 50 percent to 70 percent of all diseases are preventable as they are associated with potentially-modifiable health risks.
• In an effort to optimize employee health, decrease avoidable healthcare utilization and enhance work execution, and in turn decreased healthcare costs and improve employee satisfaction and retention, many corporations are beginning, or are interested in beginning, Employee Wellness Programs for employees.

The advantages of worksite wellness are well documented. More than 120 research studies repeatedly show themes such as improvements in health outcomes coupled with high returns on investment (ROI). Some primary findings include the following:

• Savings of $3.48 in reduced medical care costs per dollar invested.
• Savings of $5.82 in reduce absenteeism costs per dollar invested.
• ROIs of at least $3 to $8 per dollar invested within five years of program implementation.
• Lifestyle behavior change programs: $3 to $6 return on investment within 2 to 5 years.
• Self care, decision support programs: $2 to $3 ROI within a year.
• Disease management programs: $7 to $10 ROI within a year.

By offering health improvement programs, employers are not only providing an additional service for staff members, but they are also gaining financially. Furthermore, the impact of a health improvement program goes beyond decreased medical cost and return on investment. A health improvement program can affect productiveness, absenteeism, morale, recruitment success, turnover, and medical expenditures.

• Source: Rees, C., and Finch, R. (2004). Health Improvement: A comprehensive guide to designing, launching and evaluating workplace programs. National Business Group on Health, 1 (1), 1-7.

According to the American Journal of Health Promotion, “Health promotion is the science and art of helping people modify their lifestyle to move toward a state of optimal health. Optimal health is defined as a balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health. Lifestyle modification can be facilitated through a combination of efforts to enhance awareness, modify behavior, and set up environments that support good health practices. Of the three, supportive environments will probably have the greatest impact in producing lasting change.”

Employee Health Promotion Program: Action Steps

The process of assembling a Corporate Wellness Program involves:

• Identifying the current health status of your employees
• Determining the appropriate programs and interventions to offer
• Promoting and launching the programs
• Building in motivational incentives and rewards
• Measuring the impact
• Revising programs based on assessment outcomes

It may even include planning policies and procedures that support employee participation in wellness activities at your worksite (such as flextime).

Steps to Starting a Worksite Wellness Program

• Conduct an company assessment
• Get upper management reinforcement
• Establish a Employee Health Promotion Program Committee
• Obtain employee input
• Develop objectives and goals
• Design and enable program activities
• Identify incentives
• Assess outcomes

One of the ways the government plans to better the nation’s health is through comprehensive Workplace Health Promotion Programs. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, these programs may help staff members live healthier lifestyles by creating supportive work environments and offering awareness, education and behavior change programs. In fact, one of the objectives and goals of Healthy People 2010, a set of health objectives for the nation to achieve by the year 2010, is to stimulate the proportion of staff members that participate in a comprehensive Workplace Health Promotion Program at their worksite to 75 percent.

5 Ways to Evaluate and Improve Your workers’ Health

Emotional health is a state of wellness that comes from understanding and acknowledging our emotions and finding appropriate ways to express them. As employees, we frequently bring emotional problems from our childhood or current family life into the worksite because we haven’t dealt with them effectively outside of work. This can seriously damage worksite relationships and lead to poor achievement and negative feelings all around.

Many tools and techniques exist for helping us improve our emotional health. Some of the most common are given below, with real-life case histories illustrating their use. If an unpleasant mood or feeling persists over a length of time, do not hesitate to seek out a qualified professional. Workplace Wellness Programs usually have professional backing already in place as part of their services.

1. Health Coaching / Health Counseling:
One of the hallmarks of emotional health is the willingness to ask for help when we need it. Confidential professional help, the coaching and counseling offered by employee assistance or wellness programs, can offer an external source of strength and insight for “working out” emotionally-based problems instead of “working them in” to your work.

2. Self-help Groups:
Self-help groups are designed to aid people in emotional situations in which they feel alone. The purpose of these groups is twofold: to allow people to safely feel and express their emotions, and to help break their isolation at work and/or in society at large and reintegrate them into society with the backing of a peer group.

The classic self-help group is Alcoholics Anonymous, but thanks to technology, it’s possible to connect with others that have common health challenges, no matter how unique the situation. People are taking advantage of tele-conference groups and social websites, such as sparkpeople.com and revolutionhealth.com. Company Wellness Programs frequently have such groups available through web-based or phone support. Progressive corporate wellness provider Exan Wellness, for example, offers teleconference cell groups and moderated wellness forums for interacting with others in a supportive, confidential and anonymous environment. People with shared challenges get together and discuss the emotional challenges they are facing at work or in other areas of their lives and work through shift together.

3. Journaling: Journaling is frequently recommended by counsellors as a way to help identify and process emotions. People record their emotions in writing as they experience them, in whatever form they wish. By helping the writer gain greater emotional clarity, journaling can help in making more emotionally informed decisions. In much the same way, letter writing enables people to identify and process the emotions they feel in relation to others. The letter need not be sent or its contents shared: it simply supplies a place for the expression of feelings.

An 18-year-old “army brat,” Brent has always done well at school, academically and athletically. But in his last year of high school, something seems to have happened to him. He has lost all interest in school, becoming moody and withdrawn.

Brent describes to his guidance counselor all the times he had to move when he was growing up. Each move wrenched him from his friends and forced him to play the role of the “new kid on the block.” The counselor suggests that Brent write letters to the friends he has missed over the years telling them how he felt. Finally, he has a chance to say a proper goodbye.

4. Review Your Emotional Health: Employers that seek to boost employees’ interpersonal skills, or emotional intelligence in the workplace are more efficacious, according to ground-breaking journalist Daniel Goleman. And emotional intelligence is the buzzword in workplaces these days. Some Corporate Wellness Programs have information about emotional intelligence, or emotional health assessments. Seek out more information about emotional intelligence for better corporate wellness.

5. Friendships/Support Systems: Friendships allow people to feel supported in their emotional journeys. At the same time, they give people an opportunity to develop their empathetic skills. These skills are also significant for worksite health. When we are empathic with fellow staff members, we help them resolve harmful or unhealthy emotions. New friendships are made through hobbies, classes, clubs, or even through online groups. Many people are finding emotional satisfaction by connecting or re-connecting with friends through Facebook and other social websites.

At times worksite stress that is not dealt with in a healthy manner can be brought home. A 36-year-old mother of three, Sarah, wants to be a great wife, a great mother, and a success at her job. One day, drained after a long day at work, she shouted at her rambunctious children and threatened to hit her youngest son. Her behavior horrified her. To make matters worse, she believes she is a failure at her job as well as at motherhood. She watches with jealousy as younger co-workers advance much more rapidly up the corporate ladder despite having less experience than she has.

On the advice of a counselor, she decides to take time out for herself and take a course for amateur painters. It doesn’t take long before she strikes up a friendship with a single mom in the class. She once led a life very similar to Sarah’s before managing to achieve a better balance between work and family. Her new friend becomes a much-required sounding board for Sarah and offers her perspectives on her life that she hadn’t considered before.