The 10 Essential Components of a Corporate Wellness Program
In his article “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered” architect Louis Sullivan authored a phrase which today is associated with modernist architecture and industrial design of the 20th century. He wrote “It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law. That is, the shape of a building or object should be primarily based upon its intended function or purpose.
When applying this concept to the design of a corporate wellness program it is important to note that while programs should reflect the élan or ethos of your organization, there are 10 fundamental hallmarks that every program should entail:
1. Understand your mandate. Has your company recently moved locations, are you looking to elevate your employee morale through an attractive benefits offering, or are your corporate profits undermined by rising healthcare claims? Understanding your why is essential when introducing such initiatives to your organization.
2. Senior Management must be on board. Leadership starts from the top. While it has been demonstrated that leadership can manifest itself from anywhere within an organization, it is hard to form credibility and participation company-wide if its leaders don’t walk the walk. Remember they hear what you say but see what you do.
3. Communication is key. The more vehicles you have available to share data the better. More important the consistent dissemination of information is essential to program success. Culture change takes time and effort. Communication must meet this challenge by being thorough, timely, informative, inspirational, varied and mobile.
4. Establish how success will be measured. Evaluating participation and healthy outcomes are the most common metric used when evaluating. While this is certainly worth including, your metrics should agree with your answer in question one. If you are looking to reduce your healthcare claims then setting evaluation metrics around this parameter makes sense. An organization may wish to include a number of variables to allow for a smaller victories such as individual surveys asking about improvement in morale as well as common health indicators like BMI, Heart Rate, Cholesterol, Core Stability, Harvard Step Test and Flexibility.
5. Health Risk Assessments (HRA) reveal your baseline. Without it you are at sea like a sailor without a compass. HRA’s identify an individual’s health risks and his or her unhealthy behaviors through a set of specific and focused questions. A Group HRA reveals the aggregate footprint of an organization and illustrates where those risks lie by category. This will help to target and focus wellness initiatives.
6. The program mix should be comprehensive and varied. The more program components the merrier. For your effort to captivate and yield participation you must offer an array of amenities. People love options and variety. The diversity of your program will spark interest and enhance your credibility. Seminars, speakers, rewards, use of technology, fitness sessions and nutrition consultations adds richness and depth to your program.
7. Incentives Matter. The right incentives reflect the interest level of any given population. Identifying the right motivation and attaching those incentives to healthy outcomes is key to an attractive rewards program. Recognition goes along way as well. According to Inc Magazine, employee recognition programs can increase employee engagement and lower frustration levels.
8. Your Wellness Coordinator is your conductor. The Coordinator is the tie that binds the effort together. He or she will administer, supervise and evaluate the wider program. The Coordinator should serve as a liaison between the Human Resources Department and the wider employee population. He/she sets the calendar and executes the deliverables in concert with the defined mandate of the program. The Coordinator will also leverage from external partnerships to add value to the offering.
9. Forming an employee Wellness Committee ensures sustainability. The Committee should be made up of fitness enthusiasts first and foremost. They need not be Olympians but should be ambassadors first of the program. They will also serve as a conduit between your wellness coordinator and the wider employee population. This approach allows for collaboration in the company’s program and reflects the culture in which it exists.
10. This is a marathon not a sprint. According to the Corporate Wellness Association of America, corporate wellness programs will not usually see a return on investment for at least 1-3 years. The process by which individuals understand and adopt healthy lifestyle changes occurs in phases. In the Awareness phase the health risks are communicated and the subsequent approach to mitigating those health risks are made evident. The Participation phase is where individuals take their first steps toward adopting healthy life style best practices through Assessment and understanding their baseline. The Engagement phase will see individuals begin to adopt the best practices through consistent diet and exercise programming. The sustainability phase is where improvement in micro and macro metrics level off and efforts to maintain improvement occur. It is this critical phase where lapses can occur due to a failure to maintain the advances realized in the previous phases.
The design of your wellness program should reflect the spirit and temperament of your corporate culture. That said, there are program essentials that when adopted allow form to follow function.
To schedule an intake consultation or to learn more about how these components can be adopted at your organization email us!