e-Wellness Coach

The Worksite Health Promotion Program Committee ought to set out a plan for the entire year that outlines accomplishing goals/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 provided, when and where they will be scheduled, how they will be marketed and evaluated, and what the budget is.  It is valuable to plan your wellness activities based on your goals/objectives, as well as the budget since different strategies will provide different outcomes.  By way of example, if your goal is to increase awareness on a topic, then distributing handouts or scheduling a one-time education session may be appropriate.  Nevertheless, if your intention is to change behavior, then different strategies may be necessary, such as ongoing weekly sessions and support groups.  Click here to link to Program Design Options for additional ideas.

Company Wellness Program Marketing

Now 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 inform everyone of the wellness program.  Upper Management should offer the introduction or invitation so that all workers are knowledgeable about their support and leadership in the program.

Possible marketing methods:

• Sending email messages, including reminders
• Organize bulletins,
• Displaying bulletin board postings,
• Writing articles,
• Sending letters or
• Sending special invitations.  

Other Company Health Promotion Program Considerations:

• Is the Workplace Health Promotion Program promoted to all employees or to a specific group?
• Do you have a Worksite Health Promotion Program champion (someone who is coupled with different groups in the organization, and well respected) who can help in your promotion efforts?
• If your marketing efforts aren’t working, do you have a way to revisit and adjust your plan?
• How will you determine performance and evaluate your program?  And how will you gather the information needed to evaluate your program?  

Topics most frequently included in Employee Wellness Programs:

• Nutrition
• Physical Activity/Exercise
• Tobacco Use Cessation
• Bone Health
• Heart Health
• The Spine
• Stress Reduction
• Chronic Disease Awareness & Prevention
• Self-care; Wise Medical Care Consumer
• Screening Services (BMI, Blood Pressure, bone density, cholesterol, glucose, posture, vision, and other…)
• Ergonomic Assessments
• Health Fairs
• Kids/family Events
• Others issues that staff members have interest in  

The topics and type of Corporate Wellness Program planned depend on the needs and interest, overriding intention and resources available.  Program Design Options   include awareness programs such as handouts and/or education sessions, behavior change programs such as smoking cessation and weight loss classes, and environmental or company reinforcement such as no smoking policies or healthy selections in snack 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 employees healthy and not need to screen for disease.  Instead you might want to focus on healthy lifestyle behavior such as exercise and good diet to prevent the start of disease.  Click here for more information on strategies for keeping employees well, identifying disease early, or returning employees to work who already have a chronic disease.

It is also significant to consider, and plan how you will evaluate the performance of your wellness program.  The system needs to be determined for tracking certain data and recording activities depending on the program objectives.  Step 7 discusses program assessment in more detail.   And Step 6 will launch your program!