Employer Wellness : What is a Workplace Health Promotion Program?
According to the American Journal of Health Promotion, “Health promotion is the science and art of helping people change 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 shift can be facilitated through a combination of efforts to enhance awareness, change behavior, and establish environments that support good health practices. Of the three, supportive environments will probably have the greatest effect in producing lasting change.”
Workplace Health Promotion Program: Action Steps
The process of creating a Workplace 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/rewards
• Measuring the effect
• Revising programs based on evaluation outcomes
It may even include planning policies and procedures that support employee participation in wellness activities at your workplace (such as flextime).
Steps to Starting a Employee Health Promotion Program
• Conduct an business assessment
• Obtain management backing
• Establish a Employee Wellness Program Committee
• Obtain employee input
• Design goals
• Design and enable program activities
• Select incentives and rewards
• Assess outcomes
One of the ways the government plans to improve the nation’s health is through comprehensive Corporate Health Promotion Programs. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, these programs may help workers live healthier lifestyles by creating supportive work environments and offering awareness, education and behavior change programs. In fact, one of the objectives of Healthy People 2010, a set of health objectives for the nation to achieve by the year 2010, is to stimulate the proportion of workers that take part in a comprehensive Corporate Health Promotion Program at their worksite to 75 percent.