Posted by Employee Wellness | Posted in Employee Wellness Survey | Posted on 13-01-2009
Wellness might be the fatal flaw in your Employee Health Promotion Program. Is Wellness part of your strategy? Does worksite wellness stop when your employees leave the office?
Wellness Continuity
If employees don’t have the tools to pursue health and wellness on a Personal level, then it becomes easy for them to “fall off the wagon” and slide back into a unealthy lifestyles. If you have a walking program, for example, it should encourage employees to build walking routes near their homes, perhaps with the cooperation of the neighborhood association or coworkers who live in the neighborhood.
Employee Health Promotion Programs: Always on Your Mind
Your Employee Health Promotion Program coordinator should have “vacation wellbeing” as part of their job scope. In other words, you don’t want a Employee Health Promotion Program to stop at the boundaries of the worksite campus. Instead, integrate Personal health and wellness with your Employee Health Promotion Programs.
This will benefit the Employee Health Promotion Programs in a couple of ways:
it reduces the chance that the staff member will come back to the office feeling unfit, overwhelmed and unable to resume their Employee Health Promotion Programs; and
it shows that their organization is just as invested in their Personal health and wellness as they are
Like a marathon, Personal health and wellness is a long-term venture and it’s difficult for anyone to do in isolation. Simply put, it’s easier to maintain your health when you know others are depending on you and watching your Personal performance. It’s easier to stick to an exercise program when you have a jogging partner who wakes you up when you oversleep, or spots you when you’re lifting weights.
Similarly, it’s easier to stick to your Employee Health Promotion Program when you know your organization is supporting you and wishing you the best.
Don’t Dictate Personal Health
Just as Wellness surveys serve a vital function in building a Employee Health Promotion Program, it’s vitally important that you involve employees in designing an off-site wellness strategy. No one enjoys being told what to do, but everyone enjoys having assistance in tacking tough problems. Make it clear that employees are in charge of their own health and wellness. Your role as their health management partner is to support, advise, counsel, offer resources and information.
Of course, don’t forget that part of Personal health and wellness responsibility is to offer good health risk assessment baselines so employees can proceed safely on the road to better fitness.
