The workplace environment is a effective, but often overlooked, element in managing worker health. Here we will identify some of the best-practices in establishing a Corporate Wellness Program that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows workers to take charge of their own health. For example, a Corporate Wellness Program that includes a tobacco-free workplace policy increases the likelihood that workers will try to quit tobacco use and will quit smoking successfully. Similarly, a Corporate Wellness Program that includes discounting healthy foods in your cafeteria and vending machines helps raise workers’ consumption of healthy foods which supports your investment in disease management programs for workers with diabetes, heart disease or hypertension. The following will guide you through the ten key steps in establishing a Corporate Wellness Program and workplace environment that promotes worker health.

In an era of increasing healthcare costs and fervent competition, employers have a vested interest in the health of their workers. Research has found that, on average, workers with healthy behaviors (such as not smoking or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower healthcare expenses, are absent from work less often, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than workers with unhealthy behaviors.

Corporate Wellness Program: Securing Leadership Support

Corporate Wellness Program support from the highest level of leadership is vital to your success in establishing a culture of health within your workplace. Look for Corporate Wellness Program support from a leader who is respected by and can influence other leaders. (It’s not necessary that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Corporate Wellness Program.) You will be relying on this culture-of-health champion to advocate for changes that you recommend and to ensure the organization allocates adequate Corporate Wellness Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the workplace policies, physical environment, and social norms.

Secure Corporate Wellness Program Staff and Financing

The creation and maintenance of a Corporate Wellness Program within your business needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your business is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Corporate Wellness Program. There are a number of ways to find an individual with the necessary skills to guide and support your business’s Corporate Wellness Program.

Establishing facilities and Corporate Wellness Program policies, such as those allowing workers to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be expensive, but it does require adequate and sustained financing. If possible, include the creation of a workplace environment that supports the Corporate Wellness Program as a permanent part of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your business.

Worker Involvement in the Corporate Wellness Program

Pulling together a representative group of staff members to advise your business’s Corporate Wellness Program ensures that improvements in workplace facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of staff members. In addition, these workers can support as the front-line Corporate Wellness Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.

Create a Corporate Wellness Program “Brand” and Vision

A Corporate Wellness Program vision and a brand are effective first steps in turning a Corporate Wellness Program from an idea to a reality. What would you like your workplace environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Corporate Wellness Program vision statement summarizes for all (workers and leaders alike) the reasons for establishing a Corporate Wellness Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between worker health and your business’s ability to achieve its overall mission.

Branding your business’s Corporate Wellness Program sends a message to workers that the business’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Select a Corporate Wellness Program name and logo that resonate with workers. Then use that brand on all Corporate Wellness Program communications with workers about the policies, facilities and programs your business offers to promote healthy behaviors.

Determine Your Present Corporate Wellness Program Situation

Exactly how your business creates a Corporate Wellness Program that promotes healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your business and employee population.

Determine how the current workplace facilities, policies, and unwritten norms support — or discourage — healthy behaviors.

Gather information on the health and health-related behaviors of your employee population. The most common method is by using a validated health risk assessment. If you don’t have data specific to your workers, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data. Note: Information on staff members’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.

Set Corporate Wellness Program Priorities and Goals

Use what you’ve learned about the health of the employees and about your current workplace environment to determine your business’s Corporate Wellness Program priorities. From those Corporate Wellness Program priorities, define clear and measurable Corporate Wellness Program goals for improving the health of the employees and your business’s culture. Well written goals will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.

Select Corporate Wellness Program Strategies

Focus your business’s Corporate Wellness Program resources (time, energy and money) on tactics that are most likely to produce results: a rise in healthy eating, a rise in physical activity, and a reduction in tobacco use. There’s no need to guess at what might work. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of studies and has identified the Corporate Wellness Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Corporate Wellness Program tactics are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.

The formula for Corporate Wellness Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.

Implement Corporate Wellness Program Strategies

Once you’ve chosen your Corporate Wellness Program Strategies, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline. The “right” amount of time for implementing each Corporate Wellness Program strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your business. Work plans keep your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to start a Corporate Wellness Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.

Educate and Communicate About the Corporate Wellness Program

Ensure workers are aware of the Corporate Wellness Program opportunities you’ve provided. Planning your Corporate Wellness Program communications allows you to communicate regularly with workers without overwhelming them at any one time.

Monitor and Report Your Corporate Wellness Program Results

At the same time that you plan your Corporate Wellness Program Strategies, think about how you’ll measure success. It’s much easier to gather information – or to start systems for collecting information — before you implement a Corporate Wellness Program strategy rather than as an afterthought. Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in worker morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in rates of absenteeism or healthcare claims.

Report both your Corporate Wellness Program successes in building a healthy workplace environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides workers time for walking during the workday), and Corporate Wellness Program successes in getting staff members to take charge of their health (a rise in the number of workers who contacted the stop-smoking program, or a rise in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).