Wednesday, July 6, 2011

what makes a good workplace wellness program

Organizing and running a WW program is not just about getting a speaker (like me) into motivate people for a day or two. They need real long term planning. Unfortunately the majority of WW programs that companies invest in are half-baked with little or no valid research to suggest that they will work. In this blog I have presented some guidelines from my research to help you get started. They need to be comprehensive, well planned and well thought out. From a survey of 89 organisations in Missouri private sector worksites with 250 or more employees that offered a worksite health promotion program, it was concluded that “the number of programs offered does not appear to be as important as depth of level of intervention. Have a smaller but more concentrated program rather than trying to run lots of smaller projects.

To facilitate long term behaviour change and achievement of organizational goals, it was recommended that programs should attempt to include the following four levels of intervention:
• I) Communication/Awareness.
• II) Screening/Assessment
• III) Education/Lifestyle Programs
• IV) Behaviour Change Support Systems

In support of this the Glaxo Wellcome corporation identified critical success factors for the success of their Health and Wellness program as
• Senior management support
• Contracting
• Focus
• Longitudinal programming
• Stages of readiness for change model
• Integration with other health programs
• Integrated data analysis
• Feedback/continuous improvement
• Employee surveys
• Continuous marketing

A 12 month study to determine the effectiveness of workplace stress management programs was carried out among five hundred and one participants. Full intervention participants showed a more rapid reduction in negative responses to stress than did participants from the other groups. Full-intervention subjects also reported fewer days of illness than subjects in the other groups. These results indicated that a work-site program that focuses on a complete program can significantly reduce illness and healthcare utilization.

5 comments:

  1. i learn here a lot of thing to concentrate.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent article. Totally agree - HIlary (ex Enjo Consultant).

    ReplyDelete
  3. The best workplace stress management technique is to learn how to shoulder responsibility which will act as a shot in the arm and which will boost your emotional and physical wellbeing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. A good wellness programme also takes into account stress management techniques which include modern technology such as online stress relief games etc

    ReplyDelete
  5. Great article well done

    ReplyDelete