Posted by Company Wellness | Posted in Company Wellness | Posted on 01-11-2008
Wellness might be the fatal flaw in your Corporate Health Promotion Program. Is Wellness part of your strategy? Does worksite wellness stop when your staff members leave the office?
Wellness Continuity
If staff members 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 staff members to build walking routes near their homes, perhaps with the cooperation of the neighborhood association or coworkers who live in the neighborhood.
Corporate Health Promotion Programs: Always on Your Mind
Your Company Wellness Program coordinator should have “vacation wellbeing” as part of their job scope. In other words, you don’t want a Company Wellness Program to stop at the boundaries of the worksite campus. Instead, integrate Personal health and wellness with your Corporate Health Promotion Programs.
This can benefit your Corporate Health Promotion Programs in a couple of ways:
it lowers the chance that the employee will come back to the office feeling unfit, overwhelmed and unable to resume their Corporate Health Promotion Programs; and
it shows that their corporation is just as invested in their Personal health and wellness as they are
Like a marathon, Personal health and wellness is a long-term endeavor and it’s difficult for anyone to do in isolation. Simply put, it’s easier to maintain your state of health when you know others are depending on you and watching your Personal performance. It’s easier to maintain 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 maintain to your Company Wellness Program when you know your corporation is supporting you and wishing you the best.
Don’t Dictate Personal Health
Just as Wellness surveys serve a vital function in building a Corporate Health Promotion Program, it’s vitally important that you involve staff members 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 staff members 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 staff members can proceed safely on the road to better physical fitness.