The Company Wellness Program Committee ought to set out a plan for the entire year that outlines accomplishing goals and objectives, as well as provides details for marketing and evaluating the program. The plan is the detailed map of what types of programs will be offered, when and where they will be scheduled, how they will be marketed and evaluated, and what the budget is. It is important to plan your wellness activities based on your goals and objectives, as well as the budget since different strategies will provide different outcomes. For example, if your objective is to broaden awareness on a topic, then distributing handouts or scheduling a one-time class may be appropriate. Nonetheless, if your objective is to change behavior, then different strategies may be necessary, such as ongoing weekly meetings and support groups. Click here to link to Program Design Options for additional ideas.
Worksite Wellness Program Marketing
This is the time to coordinate your 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 over and over! Consider having an overall kickoff exercise to let everyone know about the wellness program. Upper Management must provide the introduction or invitation so that all workers are aware of their reinforcement and leadership in the program.
Possible marketing methods:
• Sending email messages, including reminders
• Create bulletins,
• Hanging bulletin board postings,
• Writing articles,
• Sending letters or
• Distributing special invitations.
Other Worksite Wellness Program Considerations:
• Is the Company Health Promotion Program promoted to all employees or to a specific target audience?
• Do you have a Company Health Promotion Program champion (someone who is connected with different groups in the organization, and well respected) who can help in your promotion efforts?
• If your marketing efforts do not seem to be working, do you have a way to revisit and change your plan?
• How will you determine effectiveness and evaluate your program? And how will you collect the information needed to evaluate your program?
Topics most frequently included in Corporate Health Promotion Programs:
• Nutrition
• Physical Activity/Exercise
• Tobacco Use Cessation
• Bone Health
• Cardiovascular Health
• The Spine
• Stress Reduction
• Chronic Disease Awareness & Prevention
• Self-care; Wise Health Care Consumer
• Screening Services (BMI, Blood Pressure (BP), bone density, blood lipids, 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 Company Wellness Program planned hinge upon the needs and interest, overall goal and resources available. Program Design Options include awareness programs such as brochures and/or education sessions, behavior change programs such as tobacco cessation and weight loss classes, and environmental or organization support such as no smoking policies or healthy selections in vending machines.
The programs planned also depend on the demographics of your workforce. If you have a young, healthy workforce, you may want to focus the wellness attention on keeping staff members healthy and not need to screen for disease. Instead you might want to focus on healthy lifestyle behavior such as exercise and great diet to prevent the on-set of disease. Click here for more information on strategies for keeping staff members well, identifying disease early, or returning staff members to work who already have a chronic conditions.
It is also valuable to consider, and plan how you will evaluate the performance of your wellness program. The system needs to be established for tracking certain data and recording activities depending on the program goals/objectives. Step 7 discusses program assessment in more detail. And Step 6 will launch your program!
