Workplace Wellness: Take Your Wellness Programs To The Next Level

Workplace Wellness Next Level

You have been offering wellness programs for several years now.

Are your programs becoming stale? Obsolete?

How can your wellness program be improved?

For many companies, previously, their wellness program was seen as a “nicety” or “value-add” to their benefits plan. Now Next Level Wellness programs are designed in a more conscious way to target specific cost drivers and the programs are more integrated into the fabric of the organization.

How do you move your workplace wellness program to the next level?

Workplace Wellness Next Level Step One:
Assess how comprehensive your wellness program is

• • Does your organization have an overall health policy stating it’s intent to protect and promote the health of all employees?

• • Do you have a strategic plan to developing and sustaining a psychologically healthy workplace and is it based on employee needs?

• • Have you trained your leaders in healthy workplace principles and strategies?

• • Do leaders and teams demonstrate through their comments and actions, a commitment to the development of a psychologically healthy workplace?

• • Is there a formal assessment process to determine employee needs, attitudes and preferences in regard to developing a  psychologically healthy workplace?

• • Are the workplace health assessment results analyzed and are goals set out in a strategic healthy workplace plan?

• • Is it easy for people to provide ongoing input on healthy workplace and organizational issues?

• • Do you measure employee satisfaction levels in order to improve the workplace?

• • Is there a dedicated budget and committee to properly implement your strategic healthy workplace plan?

• • Do you evaluate the outcomes and impact of your programs and make adjustments as necessary?

How does your workplace measure up? Are there areas that still need to be addressed or tightened up?

Workplace Wellness Next Level Step Two:
Target the right stuff

General mental and physical health information and strategies are a necessity for the overall organization. Employees who participate in these wellness programs report a positive impact to their happiness or well-being and reduced levels of stress.

However, it is important to provide targeted health information to impact certain conditions and challenges.

Targeted health education

Targeted health education means your employees receive information about their own health conditions. This information is sent to employees directly from your insurance provider. Insurance providers use data regarding employees’ use of benefits or from biometric screenings, to send them relevant information. For example, if an employee is taking medication for diabetes, the insurance provider may send them diabetes and medication-related information. This benefit is opt-in, so only interested employees will receive it and their privacy is protected.

Personal coaching services may be implemented for ‘high-risk’ employees. Next level wellness programs try to move high-risk employees to low risk employees and know that this is a long-term process and personal coaching is often needed.

Workplace Wellness Next Level Step Three:
Help Employees To Chose Their Right Path

Next Level Workplace Wellness has moved from mainly focusing on physical health strategies to personal health strategies that incorporate mental, financial and social health. Strategies are presented in a way that the employee is able to design strategies to fill their tool belt. They create their own personal action plan that can enable them to manage their stress, promote their well-being, build their resiliency and maintain positive social connections in their workplace, family and community.

Next Level Workplace Wellness now includes innovative programs and tools for gaining financial wellness, supporting mental health, sustaining a healthy diet, sleep habits, and exercise routine, promoting mindfulness, reinforcing stress management strategies, enhancing communication and building connections, as well as changes to culture and leadership behaviors to support these efforts. All of these programs and tools are presented in a way to help the employee live an engaged and fulfilling life.

Workplace Wellness Next Level Step Four:
Create a healthy organization with wellness ingrained into the fabric of the organization

Healthy organizations have:

• An enabling culture – which encompasses best practices in recruitment, retention, development, communication, benefits and compensation
• Workplace practices that reduce health risks
• A corporate environment based on values of trust, fairness and respect
• Supportive Leaders who are concerned about their employee’s well-being, and who are skilled at holding ‘supportive conversations’
• Employees who report high job quality which includes a supportive environment, interesting work, adequate resources, access to learning opportunities, fair pay, reasonable workloads, and the ability to balance work and personal life.