Startinging a Company Health Promotion Initiative

Employee Wellness Initiatives start and end with individual health. Individuals, after all, are able to make decisions about maintaining and / or improving their health and wellbeing. Employee Employee Wellness Initiatives must therefore provide the tools and resources necessary to assist and motivate individuals to actively participate in the program.

Individual health is only one component of creating employee Employee Wellness Programs. Below you’ll find some things to assist you in your efforts to develop a healthy atmosphere for you and your coworkers.

Encouraging Your Employer to Begin an Company Health Promotion Initiative

This is the first step in creating a Employee Wellness Program. In recent times more and more employers are creating to see the value of promoting and supporting the health of their employees. Partnership for Prevention, a nonprofit organization, has released a sourcebook called “Healthy Workforce 2010″ (http://www.wellnessproposals.com/pdfs/tool_kits/healthy_workforce_2010.pdf). This sourcebook is an excellent resource containing information on:
•    Benefits of Employee Wellness Initiatives
•    Suggestions on where to start
•    Tools like surveys and assessment forms

These resources are for both employers and employees to lead the development and evaluate the effectiveness of their new Employee Wellness Program. Provide it to your employer as a place to start or read it yourself and present your ideas.

Participating in Employee Wellness Initiatives

Once you have an employee Company Health Promotion Initiative established, taking part fully in all aspects of the program is important. Many of us know that we need to more actively engage in Employee Wellness Initiatives to enhance our health, yet have difficulty finding and taking the time to do so. These simple steps can jumpstart your participation in an employee Employee Wellness Program:
•    Review the offerings that interest you and that you need for health  improvement.
•    Schedule time to go to the seminar or service.
•    Actively following through with recommendations from the program.
•    Make a decision now to enhance your health. You will feel better today and tomorrow and the next day for actively moving towards wellness.

Here is a list of potential Employee Wellness Initiatives that might be available to you at work:
•    ergonomic evaluations and ergonomic training classes
•    lactation rooms and classes
•    prenatal education
•    nap rooms for relaxation
•    stress management programs
•    fitness facilities
•    onsite corporate massage
•    nutrition education
•    onsite primary health care services
•    child care facility or resources and referral service
•    tobacco cessation programs parenting classes
•    Elder care resource and referral service
•    cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose screening programs
•    flu vaccination
•    weight management and / or weight loss programs
•    health care consumerism programs
•    work/life programs
•    health coaching
•    onsite mammography

More information to follow in my next posting about Employee Employee Wellness Initiatives