In an era of increasing health care costs and intense competition, corporations have a vested interest in the health of their workers. Research has found that, on average, workers with healthy behaviors (such as not using tobacco or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower health care expenses, are absent from work less frequently, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than workers with unhealthy behaviors.

Worksite Wellness Program: Gaining Upper Management Support

Worksite Wellness Program support from the highest level of upper management is vital to your success in creating a culture of wellness within your worksite. Look for Worksite Wellness Program support from a leader who is respected by and can influence other leaders. (It’s not necessary that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Worksite Wellness Program.) You will be relying on this culture-of-health champion to advocate for changes that you recommend and to ensure the organization allocates adequate Worksite Wellness Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the worksite policies, physical environment, and social norms.

Gain Worksite Wellness Program Staff and Financing

Starting and maintaining a Worksite Wellness Program within your business needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your business is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Worksite Wellness Program. There are a number of ways to find an individual with the needed skills to guide and support your business’s Worksite Wellness Program.

Establishing facilities and Worksite Wellness Program policies, such as those allowing workers to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be expensive, but it does require adequate and sustained financing. If possible, include the creation of a worksite environment that supports the Worksite Wellness Program as a permanent part of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your business.

Staff Member Involvement in the Worksite Wellness Program

Developing a representative group of staff members to advise your business’s Worksite Wellness Program ensures that improvements in worksite facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of staff members. In addition, these workers can support as the front-line Worksite Wellness Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.

Develop a Worksite Wellness Program Vision and “Brand”

A Worksite Wellness Program vision and a brand are powerful first steps in bringing a Worksite Wellness Program from an idea to a reality. What would you like your worksite environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Worksite Wellness Program vision statement summarizes for all (workers and leaders alike) the reasons for creating a Worksite Wellness Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between worker health and your business’s ability to achieve its overall mission.

Branding your business’s Worksite Wellness Program conveys to workers that the business’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Choose a Worksite Wellness Program name and logo that resonate with workers. Then use that brand on all Worksite Wellness Program communications with workers about the policies, facilities and programs your business offers to promote healthy behaviors.

Assess Your Existing Worksite Wellness Program Situation

Exactly how your business establishes a Worksite Wellness Program that promotes healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your business and employee population.

Assess how the current worksite facilities, policies, and unwritten norms support — or discourage — healthy behaviors.

Gather information on the health and health-related behaviors of your employee population. The most common method is by using a validated health risk assessment. If you don’t have data specific to your workers, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data. Note: Information on staff members’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.

Determine Worksite Wellness Program Priorities and Goals

Use what you’ve discovered about the health of the employees and about your current worksite environment to determine your business’s Worksite Wellness Program priorities. From those Worksite Wellness Program priorities, define clear and measurable Worksite Wellness Program goals for improving the health of the employees and your business’s culture. Well written goals will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.

Choose Worksite Wellness Program Strategies

Focus your business’s Worksite Wellness Program resources (time, energy and money) on tactics that are most likely to produce results: a rise in healthy eating, a rise in physical activity, and a reduction in tobacco use. There’s no need to guess at what might work. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of studies and has identified the Worksite Wellness Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Worksite Wellness Program tactics are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.

The formula for Worksite Wellness Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.

Implement Worksite Wellness Program Strategies

Once you’ve chosen your Worksite Wellness Program Strategies, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline. The “right” amount of time for implementing each Worksite Wellness Program strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your business. Work plans maintain your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to establish a Worksite Wellness Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.

Educate and Communicate About the Worksite Wellness Program

Ensure workers are aware of the Worksite Wellness Program opportunities you’ve provided. Planning your Worksite Wellness Program communications allows you to communicate regularly with workers without overwhelming them at any one time.

Monitor and Report Your Worksite Wellness Program Results

At the same time that you plan your Worksite Wellness Program Strategies, think about how you’ll measure success. It’s much easier to gather information – or to establish systems for collecting information — before you implement a Worksite Wellness Program strategy rather than as an afterthought. Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in worker morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in absenteeism or health care claims.

Report both your Worksite Wellness Program successes in building a healthy worksite environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides workers time for walking during the workday), and Worksite Wellness Program successes in getting staff members to take charge of their health (a rise in the number of workers who contacted the stop-smoking program, or a rise in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).