What is a Employee Wellness ?
According to the American Journal of Health Promotion, “Health promotion is the science and art of helping people alter their lifestyle to move toward a state of good 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, alter behavior, and set up environments that support great health practices. Of the three, supportive environments will probably have the greatest effect in producing lasting change.”
Employee Wellness : Action Steps
The process of building a Employee Wellness involves:
• Identifying the current health status of your employees
• Determining the appropriate programs and interventions to offer
• Promoting and implementing the programs
• Building in motivational incentives/rewards
• Measuring the effect
• Revising programs based on evaluation outcomes
It may even include creating policies and procedures that support employee participation in wellness activities at your worksite (such as flextime).
Steps to Starting a Employee Wellness
• Conduct an business assessment
• Obtain management reinforcement
• Establish a Employee Wellness Committee
• Obtain employee input
• Create objectives and goals
• Design and implement program activities
• Identify incentives/rewards
• Evaluate outcomes
One of the ways the government plans to improve the nation’s health is through accross the board Employee Wellness . According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, these programs may help employees 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 boost the proportion of employees that participate in a accross the board Employee Wellness at their worksite to 75 percent.
