• Clearly communicating the benefits of being physically active during the workday reinforces the organization’s commitment to assisting all workers be active.

Use meetings, bulletin boards, newsletters and e-mail to reach as many employees as possible at least once a year.

• Make available flex time for exercise. Invite workers who actively commute to work or exercise at lunchtime to make up any missed time later in the day.

• Allow staff to work part time, so that they can participate in physical activity.

• Include a exercise account in your benefit plan to pay for or subsidize fitness memberships, assessments, classes, counselling or instruction.

• Give interest-free loans for workers to buy bicycles or good walking footwear/runners.

• Conduct periodic surveys of staff physical activity preferences, and offer a selection of choices to suit those interests and needs.

• Hire certified individuals  to lead stretch breaks or exercise programs or classes. for help in finding accredited fitness leaders, visit Alberta’s Provincial Fitness Unit.

• Recognize personnel who take part in physical activity. Survey personnel first to determine how they prefer to be recognized, e.g., through company newsletters, appreciation lunches, rewards and/or thank you notes.

• Provide child care and other family-friendly amenities during physical activities that occur after work.

• Avoid scheduling meetings over lunch.

• Be certain to encourage active breaks instead of coffee breaks.

• Have active fundraisers rather than bingos. for  instance, employees might climb the Calgary Tower stairs or take turns riding a stationary bicycle for 24 hours.

• Make birthday celebrations active times. Instead of a lunch, invite the birthday individuals to select an activity. Options could include a session with a yoga instructor or an evening ski trip.

• Promote a casual dress day. One study found that workers who dress casually were more physically active.

As a long-term goal, having your general health plan, worker assistance program (EAP) and health promotion program communicating regularly with one another about employees’ treatments is the single best way to reduce redundant or contradictory treatments, eliminate unnecessary claims and increase the quality of the plans for which you pay.

Let’s look at the relationship between your health promotion program and your EAP to illustrate the importance of attacking healthcare costs cross a broad front.

You can start a wellness program with a health risk appraisal and then, if appropriate, roll out a use of tobacco cessation program or a weight loss program.

But ultimately you want to make sure that your wellness vendor works along with your EAP vendor.

Here’s why –  It’s very common for an employee to contact the EAP because the person feels depressed about his or her weight. What you want is for the EAP provider to treat the employee’s depression and behavioral issues, plus you want the EAP to refer the employee to the health promotion program to deal with the root cause of the problem – obesity.

The same thing accompanies the relationship your health promotion program and your workers’ comp vendor, STD and LTD vendors, rehab individuals , and/or disease managers. You want all them talking to – and sharing data with – each other. When they’re not, it’s costing you money.

In general, the companys who achieve the greatest cost savings through their health promotion programs are the ones who overlap wellness with behavioral and occupational health issues.

• Start a wellness newsletter or intranet.

• Promote the Activity Tracker and encourage employees to track their physical activity every week.

• be creative, and make the most of the workspace you have. for example, mark off a safe walking path inside or around the building.

You could also set up a training circuit, highlighting features of the worksite such as stairs.

• Offer exercise opportunities at different times to accommodate night-, shift-, and part-time staff members.

• For staff members in remote or satellite offices, offer equal access to key wellness programs via the intranet. Adapt challenges to suit their environment and take benefit of local facilities and resources.

• Make exercise available to employees with special needs. Adapt information and activities for any staff who are visually impaired or physically disabled in addition to for individuals  who speak English as a second language.

• Educate staff members about exercise using information from reputable sources such as the Alberta Center for Active Living.

• Provide facilities that invite onsite physical activity. Possibilities include bike racks, an exercise room, change rooms with lockers and showers, and safe and attractive grounds for walking.

• Hold walking meetings.

• Make sure to encourage employees to walk to coworkers’ offices in lieu of e-mailing or phoning.

• Make certain to set up a stretching room. This low-cost program requires only a room, stretching mats, stability balls and medicine balls. Put up posters that show stretches and exercises.

• Provide incentives like shoe bags, ball caps, T-shirts or water bottles to reward staff participation.

• Loan out pedometers for three months, so that workforce can determine how many steps they ordinarily take and how much activity they need to add to get basic health benefits.

• Make space for workforce to plant and maintain a flowerbed or garden at the worksite. Use any resulting produce for meetings and potluck lunches or donate it to charity.

• Plan a worksite wellness fair.

• Hire a certified fitness professional to design and manage an on-site fitness facility.

• Supply workforce with active wear that shows off the corporation logo.

Common thread –  the way you prepare – and control – your budget for a health promotion program is critical to its success.

1. Top-down wellness budget

Depending on the size of your business and wellness program, you could have full budget responsibility or might need to work with a C-level who’s budgeting expertise.

Regardless of the arrangement, you’re likely to face one of two distinct challenges –  a top-down budget or a zero-based budget.

A top-down budget is when you’re given a finite dollar amount and told to run the health promotion program within the limit. When that’s the case, here are three vital questions to ask –

• Does this limit include money set aside for staff member incentives and future initiatives?

• Should we keep long-tenured wellness programs that keep going up in price, and

• Does Benefits/HR have to deliver all education about the health promotion program, or is there extra funding to hire staff?

2.  Zero-based health promotion budgeting

In zero-based funding, you submit to upper-level management an itemized list of the health promotion programs/features you want and the cost of each. Best practices –

• Rank health promotion programs by priority (health-risk assessments should be at or near the top)

• Indicate which expenditures are fixed and which are variable, and

• List ways to incorporate existing resources (like an EAP program) for a better return on investment.

3. Estimating wellness Return On Investment (ROI)

On average, health promotion programs generally take at least 18 months to break even. After three years, you ought to see savings.

When not, it’s time to take a fresh look at the health promotion program design.

• Organize and promote monthly or bi-monthly company events that are fun and active, e.g., picnics with physical games, staff tournaments and dragon boat racing.

Be certain to encourage families to join in by including all-ages events such as relay races, soccer matches, bocce ball and baseball games.

• Start a swim club at a local pool. Invite groups of workforce to swim the distance of a nearby lake. Convert kilometres to lengths and reward workforce who complete the swim.

Make sure to set up a challenge between personnel and managers to see who covers the greatest distance.

• Post a sign-up board where staff can become a member of  group or find a buddy to participate in activities of interest.

• Arrange a corporation badminton tournament that lasts several months, with each employee playing once a week. Post the results as the tournament progresses.

• Organize an office Olympics, World Cup, Wimbledon or Masters Games. Invite teams to compete in several activities over a month. Reward everyone who participates.

• Create a point system in which one minute of activity is equivalent to one point. Make sure to set a target, and post a chart where all staff can track their points. Reward the first group to reach that target.

• Co-ordinate a stair climb challenge. Post a chart at the top of the stairwell, and encourage staff members to track the number of flights of stairs they climb each workday.

Make certain to set up teams, and award a prize to the first team to climb the equivalent of Mount Everest.

• Post and promote a sign-up board for lunchtime walking groups.

• Organize a walk “across the United States ” Select a route, find out how many steps it would take to walk that distance and challenge staff members to do it.

Give or loan pedometers to staff, and ask them to record the number of steps they take. Or, when you can’t afford pedometers, track the minutes walked. Be certain to set up a challenge between staff and managers to see who can walk across the U.S.  first.

• Co-ordinate a walk to work club. Acknowledge workers who either walk to work or walk to public transit.

• Have a volunteer group leader guide weekly lunchtime power walks.

• Coordinate a million-step challenge. Form groups, challenge each group to walk a combined total of a million steps and reward the winner. Departments or sites could compete with each other and with management.

• Challenge workers to walk 10,000 steps a day. Purchase pedometers for all participating workers or, if you cannot afford that, make pedometers available at a reduced rate.

Provide tips for increasing daily steps, and reward personnel who succeed.

In Washington, lobbyists have spearheaded a push for Congress, the DOL and IRS to crack down on “punitive” wellness programs.

Specifically, the groups seek to limit wellness programs in which employees’ share of their health costs are directly tied to their willingness to take part in a wellness program.

HIPAA’s non-discrimination rules prohibit employers from building negative financial incentives for staff with health risks.

For  instance, you can’t raise someone’s premium share because he or she smokes. What you can do is offer a discount when someone completes a use of tobacco cessation program.

Reason –  the law does allow for financial incentives to personnel who willingly participate in health promotion programs.

The watchdog groups seek greater regulation to be sure incentives and discounts are used only as rewards for healthy behavior, not as a thinly veiled form of discrimination against high-risk staff.

Wellness Program –  A Range of Approaches

Although the goal is to eventually have a long-term, robust health promotion program, some corporations prefer to begin with a single program at a basic level.

For  instance, the first steps could be as simple as offering lunch-hour sessions on first aid or healthy eating; or they may launch a pilot project to determine how interested personnel are to ensure personnel needs are being met before taking on anything more ambitious.

This approach provides a chance to show the impact on personnel and the workplace so senior management will be more willing to consider a larger and more far-reaching strategy.

Other corporations plan a selection of health promotion programs to meet the needs of the different kinds of individuals  that make up their workforce.  And some decide to create a sound corporation case, complete with a health strategy, before trying any kind of health promotion program.

Organizations want to ensure that a new wellness program is fully integrated with their overall corporation vision and mission.

Wellness Program –  Success Factors

Regardless of whether your corporation chooses to think big from the outset or to start with something smaller, always rememberthe following key success factors –

• support and participation from management;

• worker involvement in planning;

• wellness programs that meet staff member needs;

• A realistic budget; and

• continuous review.

In sports, a game plan is a series of steps that a team must follow to accomplish its goal of winning. Most winning teams plan to win. Organizations also need game plans, even when they don’t call them by that name.

Good planning will help to ensure that your wellness program happens the way you want it to, and that costs can be identified in advance and kept within budget. Good planning prevents small problems from becoming bigger.

Steps in Developing a Health Promotion Program

Obtain senior management support. You may need to create a business case to convince managers that the health promotion program is a business strategy-that employee health and job satisfaction affects their productivity. Employees need to see evidence that senior management believes in and is committed to employee health.

Establish a planning committee. Members can include representatives from staff member groups as well as from HR, health and safety, and communications.

Collect information.  To prove that your wellness program is beneficial, establish a benchmark before the wellness program starts. You could wish to look at employee satisfaction, absenteeism rates, stress levels, drug costs or WCB costs.

Assess what worksite facilities are available to support personnel to make healthy choices such as showers and change areas or a secure place to store a bicycle. Assess staff member needs through a recent survey or questionnaire, suggestion box or focus group. Communicate the results.

Create the plan to reflect the information gathered. Include health promotion program goals, activities and how you’re going to measure whether your goals were met.

Keep the plan flexible. You may have to change direction in response to staff member feedback or changes in the company’s structure.

Get executive management approval. Support for staff time and a budget are needed.

Put activities in place. Provide a selection of activities that develop awareness, increase knowledge, develop skills, and provide social interaction.

Activities could include walking clubs, participation in national campaigns like Employee Wellness Week, SummerActive, WinterActive, corporate challenge, golf days, and newsletters that provide information about community resources.

Worksites can also make it easier for workforce to make healthful options by providing flextime to allow workforce to fit activity in when it is convenient or by subsidizing health promotion programs in cooperation with community or private fitness facilities. A policy on catering for meetings can ensure that healthful foods are offered.

Evaluate the plan. Share your successes with others, learn from your mistakes and modify activities.

A health promotion program does not have to be complicated or a huge investment. Just do it. Get support from management, bring several committed individuals  together to generate some ideas and get began.

That’s a enormous increase from four years ago, when just 28 percent of smaller corporations offered such health promotion programs.

There’s more to come, too. Fifteen% of respondents that didn’t currently have a disease management component to their health plan hope to add one by 2011.

The highest-demand disease management (DM) programs are for diabetes, asthma and heart illness.

Source –  Small Corporation Benefits Survey, PDR Consulting Group, 9/1/2008.

The influence of the worksite environment on the wellness of staff is profound. First there’s the physical look, feel, smell, and sounds of the place. Then you’re affected by the policies, like whether others are allowed to smoke around you.

After awhile, more subtle factors begin to affect you. Do your attempts to adopt a healthier lifestyle get recognized at work, or are they sabotaged? Are your managers inspiring you by being healthy role models? Do you get regular opportunities to learn healthier behavior?

In a supportive environment, staff feel that the corporation they work for provides them with encouragement, opportunity, and rewards for healthful lifestyles.

And the spirit that results is highly contagious. Employees who feel cared are naturally more loyal and productive.

The following ideas will help you transform your worksite environment into one that truly supports the wellness of your workforce and organization.

Health Promotion Program Ideas for Creating Supportive Environments

Health Promotion Friendly Facilities

When you enter a workplace, do you feel comfortable? Could you be happy working there? is there enough light and clean air? Are there pleasant work areas, places to eat decent food, take a walk before lunch? Close your eyes. Exactly how does it smell? Sound? Do the personnel have enough space?

There’s no doubt that our physical environment affects us, from basic safety matters to subtle factors that could cause  or reduce stress. Healthful environments often have these features –

• Vending machines with healthy food choices like low-fat milk, fruits, sugar-free and caffeine-free beverages and low-calorie snacks

• Workout area, walking paths, playing fields, basketball hoop, or other exercise opportunities onsite or nearby

• Cafeteria offers healthful foods including a salad bar with low-fat dressing

• Natural light is used whenever possible; all lighting is appropriate and adequate

• Heating and ventilation is adjustable, comfortable and healthy

• No cigarette machines, ashtrays, or smoking areas onsite

• Noise levels are safe and conducive to concentration

• Make sure to work station furniture conforms to ergometric standards

• Safety hazards have been eliminated

• Lockers and showers are available for staff members who workout before work or during breaks

• Stairs are clean and well lit, convenient and pleasant to use

Familiarity can make it hard to evaluate a workplace. People  get used to stressful conditions and forget that conditions ever bothered them.

It might be useful to ask people  who are unfamiliar with your worksite to walk through with you. Professional advisors can also help.

Proactive Health Promotion Policies

One clear way to influence behavior is through policies and procedures. If nurses aren’t permitted to work more than twelve hours in a row, there are going to be fewer medication errors.

If parents are permitted flextime to attend to their children’s needs, they will be less stressed. If employees can apply unused sick days to planned vacation time, they will save them up instead of calling in sick to use them all.

Supportive corporate policies could include –

• Seatbelt use required in company cars

• Alcohol and drug policies are appropriate to the industry

• Emergency procedures are developed, known, and practiced

• Flexible work schedules allow personnel to exercise, attend children’s school conferences, etc.

• Nontobacco use policy is enforced

• Excessive overtime is discouraged

• Membership at exercise facility is partially reimbursed

• Shift staff members are scheduled to allow adequate rest

• Medical care coverage rewards good health

• Absenteeism policy rewards workers who don’t use sick days

• Staff Member assistance program available to help employees with chemical dependencies, depression, family problems

• Meaningful consequences are given for unsafe, unhealthful, prohibited behavior.  Your company may have a policy against alcohol use during work hours, but when everybody looks the other way when someone comes back from lunch smelling like beer, the culture is one that allows drinking at lunch-and one in which written policies may be safely ignored.

Prohibited behaviors should be confronted promptly. Otherwise your policies become mere lip service instead of springboards to health.

Consistent Recognition and Rewards for Success

Attention, praise, and rewards are given for wellness achievements.

You can show you value wellness by celebrating your health promotion programs and those who’ve made lifestyle improvements in company newsletters, on bulletin boards, and at annual banquets, meetings, and celebrations. Incentives are a direct way to show appreciation, too.

Health Promotion mentors are sought and applauded, too. Employees who support others’ efforts to improve their health are noticed and appreciated. Coworker modeling and mentoring courses can encourage those who enjoy helping others to step forward into a new role.

Managers Model and Support Healthy Behavior

Nothing could say “We encourage you to exercise often” better than a manager going on a bike ride during the lunch hour–or your supervisor sitting next to you in a weight management class.

Wellness activities promote relaxed interaction between individuals  from different departments and at different levels in the chain of command. That promotes relaxed communication and a feeling of solidarity that is pure gold.

Managers can also provide support for personnel who are working on improving their health. It does not take anything fancy-just a “good job” or “nice to see you at the gym” can put a glow on the cheeks of most of us.

Managers can also help by authorizing staff members the flexibility to attend wellness events.

Ongoing Wellness Programs

It’s important to give employees the sense that the wellness program is a permanent and important part of the corporation, not a corporation fad. That can begin as soon as a new worker is hired.

New staff are oriented to the wellness program as among the staff member benefits. Information about the wellness program should be presented by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable individuals who invites the new staff member to participate.

The employees are familiar with the ongoing health promotion programs.

The health promotion programs and wellness staff are well known in the company. Opportunities to participate are abundant and it’s easy to sign up.

A broad variety of awareness courses are offered. There are topics of interest for everybody.

In order to be effective, the wellness program must meet participants’ individual medical and psychological needs, not to mention your own organization’s need to control long-term healthcare costs.

Exactly how wide-reaching should the program be? After all, it doesn’t make sense to pay for services your personnel don’t want or can’t use.

Mary Beth Chalk of Resources for Living suggests that obesity programs could be broken down into four tiers of staff member need, from which your organization’s Return On Investment can also be measured.

Tier 1 –  Education

Tier I personnel struggle with weight management problems but don’t need a wellness Coach.  Instead, they might benefit from a self-directed program that provides weight-management related materials online, targeted mailing, and/or access to nurse call line.

How to measure ROI –  utilization. Do workers click on the Web site? Do they return to the site regularly? Do individuals  use the nurse line? Your wellness program provider ought to provide you detailed use stats.

Tier 2 –  Clinical supervision

When the worker has been diagnosed as obese – a Body Mass Index (BMI)  score over 30 is obese, over 35 is clinically obese – he or she’d do better working with a wellness coach in a clinically supervised health promotion program.

Three keys to getting maximum results –

1. Periodically have participants rate their relationship with their wellness Coaches. Not everyone clicks, so a change might  be in order.

2. Coordinate your disease management (DM) care with your staff member assistance program (EAP)services. Reason –  Inability to control weight is usually closely tied with psychological health issues – and one can adversely affect the other.

The more closely your employee assistance program (EAP) and obesity program managers work together, the higher the chance for success.

3. Beware of the fade-out effect. A lot of employees in weight-loss programs get off to a great begin and then fall back into old habits. People  should re-commit to the program after three sessions, four months and nine months.

To measure ROI, look at utlization, goal achievement and decreased presenteeism. of course, presenteeism is notoriously challenging to measure with reliable dollar figures. So how can you overcome that problem?

• Begin with employees’ salaries. Let’s suppose one participant earns $40,000 each year.

• Ask staff members to self-report how energetic and productive they feel on the job, on a percentage scale. Then have supervisors estimate the employee’s productivity and split the difference. for this example, let’s assume it averaged to 50%.

• Collect scores again six months and one year into the program and then multiply the difference by salary.  The result is your estimated productivity Return On Investment.

In the example above, when the worker earning $40,000 improves from 50 percent to 75 percent after one year, the productivity related Return On Investment (ROI) is $10,000.  

Tier 3 –  Medical management

At this level, the obese staff member needs a higher level of care than a health coach can offer.  The staff member has chronic medical conditions related to obesity – like diabetes, high blood pressure, and/or sleep apnea – and needs a physician case manager.

Especially, the worker needs to set up regular visits with the doctor and create a treatment plan.

To measure ROI, begin with the lower-tier criteria, then track quarterly and year differences in FMLA or compensated absences, and prescription drug costs. Then compare it to the per-participant cost of the obesity program.

Tier 4 –  Morbid obesity

At this level, the employee has been diagnosed as morbidly obese – BMI over 40 – and is considered a potential candidate for gastric bypass surgery.

Return On Investment is measured through ongoing health claims in addition to the previous criteria.