Employer Wellness

The Wellness Committee should set out a plan for the entire year that outlines accomplishing objectives and objectives, as well as provides details for marketing and advertising and reviewing  the program.

The plan is the detailed map of what kinds of programs will be offered, when and where they’ll be scheduled, how they’ll be marketed and assessed, and what the budget is.  

It’s important to plan your wellness activities based on your goals and goals, as well as the budget since different strategies will yield different outcomes.  For  instance, when your objective is to raise awareness on a topic, then distributing  handouts or scheduling a one-time education session may  be appropriate.  

Nonetheless, when your goal is to change behavior, then different strategies may  be necessary, like ongoing weekly sessions and support groups.  Click here to link to Program Design Choices for additional ideas.

Wellness Program Advertising and Marketing

This is the time to plan your advertising and marketing strategies!  How can you market the wellness program and ongoing activities?  No matter how you decide to, market often, keep it fresh, and remind workers again and again!  

Consider having an overall kickoff activity to let everybody know about the wellness program.  Executive Management should provide the introduction or invitation so that all workers are aware of their support and leadership in the program.

Possible marketing and advertising methods –

• Sending email messages, including reminders

• Posting flyers,

• Displaying bulletin board postings,

• Writing articles,

• Sending letters or

• Sending special invitations.  

Other Wellness Program Considerations –

• is the program promoted to all employees or to a specific target audience?

• Do you have a program champion (someone who’s connected with different groups in the organization, and well respected) who can help in your promotion efforts?

• If your advertising and marketing efforts do not seem to be working, do you have a way to revisit and adjust your strategy?

• How will you determine success and evaluate your program?  and how will you collect the information needed to evaluate your program?  

Topics most often included in Wellness Programs –

• Nutrition

• Physical Activity/Exercise

• Tobacco Use Cessation

• Bone Health

• Heart Health

• Healthy Back

• Stress Reduction

• Chronic Disease Awareness and Prevention

• Self-care; Wise Healthcare Consumer

• Screening Services (Body Mass Index (BMI), blood pressure, bone density, cholesterol, glucose, posture, vision, and other…)

• Ergonomic Assessments

• Health Fairs

• Kids/family Events

• Others topics that staff members have interest in  

The topics and type of Wellness Program planned depend on the needs and interest, overall goal and resources available.  

Program Design Options include awareness programs like  brochures and/or education sessions, behavior change or modification programs like tobacco use cessation and weight loss classes, and environmental or organizational support like no tobacco use policies or healthful selections in vending machines.  

The programs planned also depend on the demographics of your workforce.  When you have a young, healthy workforce, you may want to focus the wellness attention on keeping workers healthy and not need to screen for disease.  

Instead you could want to focus on healthy lifestyle behavior such as exercise and good nutrition to prevent the begin of disease.  Click here for additional information on strategies for keeping workers well, identifying disease early, or returning workers to work who already have a chronic condition.

It’s also important to consider, and plan how you’ll evaluate the success of your wellness program.  The system needs to be established for tracking certain data and recording events depending on the program objectives and desired outcomes.  

Step 7 discusses program investigation in more detail.   and Step 6 will launch your program!