Steps To Put in Place a Wellness Corporate Plan

Introduction

Corporate wellness programmes have been shown to improve employee health, resulting in better workplace environment, improved goodwill for the company and better services. Here is how you can go about incorporating corporate wellness programmes at your workplace.

Step 1

The first step to putting in place a corporate wellness programme is conducting a survey to find out about the lifestyle of your employees. This may include questions pertaining to eating habits, exercise routines, consumption of alcohol or tobacco and even practices such as driving without a seat-belt or knowing about first-aid and reacting to emergency situations. Only when you have so much knowledge about your employees can you figure out what sort of a corporate wellness and health education plan is needed by them. This is called a Health Risk Appraisal (abbreviated as HRA) and is often provided by your health insurance company at no cost or nominal cost.

Step 2

Also, involve the employees in decisions about corporate wellness. HRA results might show you that smoking is the biggest risk at your workplace, but it the employees think that they want exercise clubs or a gym membership more than they need smoking cessation, that is the way to go!

Step 3

Next comes implementation of your corporate wellness programme. As bigger companies can afford to have their own fitness centre or other ideas, their corporate wellness programmes are not the subject of this article. Here are some things that smaller companies can do:
Almost at no cost, you can set up a website where employees can read informative articles about health, diet and exercise. You can have someone from the local hospitals turn up at the workplace and give your employees some basic first-aid training, or a talking to about finer health issues, say, cancer, obesity etc.

Step 4

Further, simple measures, such as providing healthy drinks instead of aerated drinks that are nothing but sugar and water, go a long way in improving employee health and wellness. In the canteen, provide fruit or salads at a lower price as compared to junk food.

Step 5

You can also encourage and help employees to set up a walking or aerobics group before they turn up for work. Yoga is also very popular and will help your employees concentrate better on the task at hand and be at peace with themselves. Try to get employees to use the stairs instead of the elevator (cite how all fashion models seem to say that is helpful!), and provide a safe place for keeping bikes at your office.

Tobacco and Health

You can have a no-smoking policy in place, or bonus points for those who do not smoke or give up smoking. This is usually one of the starting points for every corporate wellness programme, because statistics show that money spend on those who smoke and their levels of absenteeism are higher than those who stay away from tobacco. Helping your employees avoid tobacco at least at the workplace is a very good idea – for them, for your business and for the country!

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