Establishing a Workplace Health Promotion Program
The workplace environment is a powerful, but frequently overlooked, component in managing staff member health. Here we will identify some of the best-practices in creating a Workplace Health Promotion Program that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows staff members to take charge of their own health. For example, a Workplace Health Promotion Program that includes a smoke-free workplace policy increases the likelihood that staff members will try to quit tobacco use and will quit using tobacco successfully. Similarly, a Workplace Health Promotion Program that includes discounting healthy foods in your cafeteria and vending machines helps increase staff members’ consumption of healthy foods which supports your investment in disease management programs for staff members with diabetes, heart disease or hypertension. The following will guide you through the ten key steps in creating a Workplace Health Promotion Program and workplace environment that promotes staff member health.
In an era of rising health care costs and fervent competition, companies have a vested interest in the health of their staff members. Research has found that, on average, staff members with healthy behaviors (such as not using tobacco or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower health care expenses, are absent from work less frequently, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than staff members with unhealthy behaviors.
Workplace Health Promotion Program: Getting Upper Management Support
Workplace Health Promotion Program support from the uppermost level of leadership is vital to your success in creating a culture of wellness within your workplace. Look for Workplace Health Promotion Program support from a leader who is respected by and can sway other leaders. (It’s not important that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Workplace Health Promotion Program.) You will be relying on this culture-of-health champion to advocate for changes that you recommend and to ensure the organization allocates adequate Workplace Health Promotion Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the workplace policies, physical environment, and social norms.
Capture Workplace Health Promotion Program Staff and Financing
Starting and maintaining a Workplace Health Promotion Program within your corporation needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your corporation is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Workplace Health Promotion Program. There are a number of ways to find an individual with the necessary skills to guide and support your corporation’s Workplace Health Promotion Program.
Establishing facilities and Workplace Health Promotion Program policies, such as those allowing staff members to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be expensive, but it does require adequate and sustained funding. If possible, include the creation of a workplace environment that supports the Workplace Health Promotion Program as a permanent part of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your corporation.
Staff Member Involvement in the Workplace Health Promotion Program
Pulling together a representative group of workers to advise your corporation’s Workplace Health Promotion Program ensures that improvements in workplace facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of workers. In addition, these staff members can support as the front-line Workplace Health Promotion Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.
Develop a Workplace Health Promotion Program Vision and “Brand”
A Workplace Health Promotion Program vision and a brand are powerful first steps in turning a Workplace Health Promotion Program from an idea to a reality. What would you like your workplace environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Workplace Health Promotion Program vision statement summarizes for all (staff members and leaders alike) the reasons for creating a Workplace Health Promotion Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between staff member health and your corporation’s ability to achieve its overall mission.
Branding your corporation’s Workplace Health Promotion Program conveys to staff members that the corporation’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Choose a Workplace Health Promotion Program name and logo that resonate with staff members. Then use that brand on all Workplace Health Promotion Program communications with staff members about the policies, facilities and programs your corporation offers to promote healthy behaviors.
Determine Your Present Workplace Health Promotion Program Situation
Exactly how your corporation establishes a Workplace Health Promotion Program that promotes healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your corporation and employee population.
Determine how the current workplace facilities, policies, and unwritten norms support — or discourage — healthy behaviors.
Gather information on the health and health-related behaviors of your employee population. The most common method is by using a validated health risk assessment. If you don’t have data specific to your staff members, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data. Note: Information on workers’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.
Establish Workplace Health Promotion Program Goals and Priorities
Use what you’ve discovered about employee health and about your current workplace environment to determine your corporation’s Workplace Health Promotion Program priorities. From those Workplace Health Promotion Program priorities, define clear and measurable Workplace Health Promotion Program goals for improving employee health and your corporation’s culture. Well written goals will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.
Choose Workplace Health Promotion Program Procedures
Focus your corporation’s Workplace Health Promotion Program resources (time, energy and money) on strategies that are most likely to produce results: an increase in healthy eating, an increase in physical activity, and a reduction in tobacco use. There’s no need to guess at what might work. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of studies and has identified the Workplace Health Promotion Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Workplace Health Promotion Program strategies are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.
The formula for Workplace Health Promotion Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.
Implement Workplace Health Promotion Program Procedures
Once you’ve chosen your Workplace Health Promotion Program Procedures, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline. The “right” amount of time for implementing each Workplace Health Promotion Program strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your corporation. Work plans maintain your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to start a Workplace Health Promotion Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.
Educate and Communicate About the Workplace Health Promotion Program
Ensure staff members are aware of the Workplace Health Promotion Program opportunities you’ve provided. Planning your Workplace Health Promotion Program communications allows you to communicate regularly with staff members without overwhelming them at any one time.
Monitor and Report Your Workplace Health Promotion Program Results
At the same time that you plan your Workplace Health Promotion Program Procedures, think about how you’ll measure success. It’s much easier to gather information – or to start systems for collecting information — before you implement a Workplace Health Promotion Program strategy rather than as an afterthought. Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in staff member morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in rates of absenteeism or health care claims.
Report both your Workplace Health Promotion Program successes in building a healthy workplace environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides staff members time for walking during the workday), and Workplace Health Promotion Program successes in getting workers to take charge of their health (an increase in the number of staff members who contacted the stop-smoking program, or an increase in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).
