Barasha Medhi September 15, 2020 Implementing the right corporate wellness plan is an important pre-requisite that’ll hugely impact the overall wellness of your company.
The right wellness plan will boost long term health by improving employee morale, productivity, and performance. Meanwhile, a subpar health plan will inspire false hope for the short term but fail to deliver upon its promises. It will be a colossal waste of time, money, and resources.
If you are a leader or manager, it’s essential that you know the signs of a corporate wellness plan that would be the right fit for your organization. Here are a few pointers to keep in mind while choosing such a health plan:
1. Conduct Health Risk Assessment Take Relevant Feedback
The first step is to take the relevant feedback from people who’ll actually be affected by the health plan. Your employees.
Chances are that your employees’ expectations are far different from what you anticipated. While you might have been thinking of short term results, they are looking to see some long term effects.
An employee wellness survey is a great way to collect the opinions that employees have and want in their health care initiatives. It is also a great way to make them feel in control over important corporate decisions that’ll affect their daily lives. To increase participation rates (accurate results) try to use a survey tool that is easy, fast, and easily accessible.
2. Set Goals and Objectives
Every workplace is unique with its own set of health risks and problems. Some companies make seek to prioritize losing weight among employees while others look to promote a heart-healthy workplace. It’s important to identify the health care needs and requirements of your employees, before designing a health-promoting plan for them. Here are some criteria to consider:
- Which health care problems do they seek to minimize?
- Will it cover physical health care concerns, mental health care concerns, or both?
- What will be the ideal short term and long term end results of the wellness plan?
- Estimating the budget of the plan.
3. Conduct Health Risk Assessment
Health risk assessments seek to identify the problem areas and health risks that employees face such as unhealthy diet, sedentary lifestyle, regular smoking, etc. It is also accompanied by health screening of vitals such as blood pressure, sugar levels, BMI, and cholesterol.
The main aim of health risk assessments is to make employees aware of the ramifications of poor lifestyle choices. However, we can’t really expect employees to have a complete change of heart from a simple health screening.
The efforts from your side need to go beyond that. Our next points will highlight how do we make sure that your workforce re-learn the importance of healthy living.
4. Introducing Workplace Competitions
The majority of people are competitive by nature. Hosting health-oriented workplace competitions seek to tap into this very competitiveness to make employees do tasks that’ll be ultimately beneficial for their health.
The popularity of such workplace challenges is increasing due to the effectiveness and the fun factor that it lends to an otherwise boring end result. Because no one would be pumped up for losing weight. But when you throw a challenge in the mixture, people become more excited about the process.
Some of the most popular challenges are step challenges, a 7-day healthy foods challenge, and much more. You can find an extensive list of office fitness challenges here.
5. Create Health Incentives
Awarding incentives upon reaching a health goal is an amazing way to encourage employees to stick to their newfound healthy habits. Behavioral; tendencies make us humans do things when we have a chance of getting rewarded for it or see others getting rewarded.
This, coupled with fitness contests that provide some form of reward at the end will prove to be effective in boosting the participation rates in the program. To see long term results, you can go beyond the traditional fitness contests and reward behaviors that promote a fit work environment. For example, if an employee always takes the stairs instead of the elevators or if someone conducts his phone calls while walking, deserves to get some kind of recognition.
6. Leadership Support
Leadership support is integral to promoting the wellness plan in your workplace. After all, why should your employees take their health seriously when the top management is so fickle about it? It’s about setting a good example and showing that you consider health to be a priority in your company values. Here are some ways, a leader can show their commitment to the overall wellbeing of their employees:
- Plan and organize support groups within the organization.
- Join the fitness contests as one of the participants. Share your ideas, stories, and thoughts about the importance of good health.
- Advocate for the health missions of your company across social media and the general public. Show everyone how important it is to you.
- Invite professional medical experts to conduct seminars to reduce health risks while balancing work and life.
7. Hire Professional Help
Running an in-house wellness plan might prove to be tough to organize, host, and implement. Luckily, there is a multitude of corporate fitness products and services that makes the task easier for you bu automating most of the health care initiatives for your employees.
The most significant one is having a corporate wellness app which provides an all in one health activities that make it easier for employees and employers to track the overall health of the organization. There are additional products and services such as an inhouse nutritionist, meditation apps, occasional yoga instructors that’ll ensure that you never run out of options to provide an optimal health care experience to your workforce.
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