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Employee wellness programs aim to improve employees’ health, from simple initiatives like encouraging lunchtime walks to more comprehensive programs with consultants and affordable healthcare. A good health plan is essential, followed by incorporating wellness suggestions, offering perks like gym memberships, and incentivizing participation. Employers must make it fun and easy to encourage healthy living and participate themselves.
Employee wellness refers to any workplace-sponsored program that hopes to help employees live healthier lives. Included in employee wellbeing could be things as simple as taking walks for lunch or adding a few lines in a company newsletter to remind people that the company is offering flu shots. Alternatively, some companies go much further, employing consultants to help them do their utmost to improve employee health, or by having a range of easy-to-use, inexpensive services that could contribute to good health.
While employee well-being is often considered separate from providing health benefits, any company interested in taking care of their employees’ health must start by offering those employees affordable health insurance with good preventative care, a full complement of physical and mental health care services. People will fall ill, with minor or major illnesses, and if part of the concern is reducing employee sick time, the safest path is to make sure people have access to doctors or other allied health professionals when they need them. Employee wellness programs that don’t start with this are unlikely to succeed. Companies also need to consider how low-paid workers can afford to enroll in health care and meet copay or coinsurance fees. If possible, preventive care services such as annual exams, vaccinations and tests should be free.
Once a good health plan is in place for employees, companies may be able to implement some of the suggestions the health plan offers. Many have monthly newsletters, great websites filled with wellness information, and reminders to employees about when they should have annual checkups or tests. These can all be incorporated into a company wellness plan, or employers can at least encourage their employees to use the resources available.
Some companies decide to pursue this much more. They may have other perks to offer employees such as free or reduced-price gym memberships, cafeterias that serve healthy food, or instructors who teach tai chi before work. A sense of fellowship could be created among employees if workers could participate in healthy cooking classes together on weekends or after work. The amount of resistance to employee wellness programs is usually encountered if the suggestions given are impossible to follow (for example, high prices for health screenings). Greater success for wellness programs tends to exist when employers allow their employees to participate without too much extra effort.
Some companies will go a little further in their efforts to keep employees healthy. They might offer them bonuses for attending wellness events or for quitting habits like smoking. Other ways to encourage participation in whatever wellness programs are offered can include giving awards or rewarding people by recognizing workers’ efforts in company newsletters.
Employers clearly understand that they benefit when their workers are healthy, and unfortunately, many Americans are not. Encouraging healthy habits and behaviors is a good idea when it comes to a light touch. Forcing employees to participate in wellness programs is unlikely to create much emotional well-being in a company. Rather, employers need to be creative and look for ways they can encourage healthy living by making it fun and easy. They must also practice what they preach and participate in these programs themselves, with great enthusiasm.
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