For a much happier and healthier workforce, every employer must develop a program that will take care of the employee wellness. This will be a very effective way to minimize cost the employee expends on health insurance premiums. The pros are that the employer ends up through the created employee wellness program building a better, smarter and rejuvenated workforce as well as spike up productivity which in turn translates increased revenue generation for the business. But most entrepreneurs lack the knowledge of how to create a corporate wellness program that yields good results.
Here are 8 steps for creating an employee wellness program for the members of your staff.
Create a Corporate Employee Wellness Program
1. Evaluate the needs using an Employee Survey
Before creating solutions to a situation, you have to know and understand the challenges to propose the right remedies that will salvage it. Most of the successful corporate wellness benefits and programs hinge on the actual needs of employees. To know the actual needs of the employees, the employer can organize and carry out a survey in the workplace and seek information from the employees in person for what they actually need in the workplace. This way, the employer gets detailed and correct information.
2. Find the challenges associated with wellness and lifestyle
You also have to show that you’re part of the life of your employees by demonstrating through and after your survey that the lifestyle and wellness needs of your employees are of paramount importance to you. For some of your employees, the challenge could be getting more active; for others, it could be to reach targeted health goals. As an employer, you need to show great concern for your employees by getting to the heart of these needs to motivate them and heighten their level of willingness to participate in the wellness program.
3. Find a suitable technology tool for your corporate wellness
The next thing you do after getting their interest to participate and in other to facilitate your corporate wellness program is to make findings and discover a suitable technology product that can help employees self-manage their wellness goals. Various wellness tech tools exist that will enable the employees to remain fit, keep their health in check and reach their weight loss goals. You as an employee will have to help them connect with the resources they need to make choices.
4. Partner with wellness vendors and the employee benefits company
You cannot achieve the creation of an employee wellness program alone, to achieve a successful wellness program, you as an employer would have to partner with many other entities and also access many other resources to this effect. It will be wise to engage the support of the employee benefits company and various wellness vendors. Paramount is the need to partner directly with the insurance broker to get guidance on what wellness benefits and tools are readily available because many offer free and low-cost options at the moment. You will also need to link up to various local wellness vendors to provide services to the employees like onsite massage therapy, healthy cooking demos, and even discounted wellness gear.
5. Develop an employee wellness policy
Draft and publish very self-explanatory employee wellness program guidelines and have them embedded in your employee handbook. On the point of recruitment, endeavor to hand them out when to the new employees, when enrolling employees in their benefit plans, and also place posters around the workplace that stimulates workers’ interest by educating employees about this various wellness initiatives.
6. Host an event for wellness focused on employees
Intermittently, it is nice to roll out your wellness programs through the organization of onsite health and wellness fair for employees and their family members and this should be in conjunction with local wellness vendors. While at it, you must endeavor to include a diverse variety of wellness interests to make this a successful event. These wellness events should be scheduled at least once every two months prior to the annual open enrollment period.
7. Provide wellness incentives in an exciting way
In addition to the wellness fair which should usually be a fun event, other fun activities to promote the wellness program should be utilized too. You must ensure a year-round education and promotion of your wellness program. To make this sink deeper, it is good to create incentives for employees who key in and take steps to better their health. Fun activity clubs like walking and running clubs should be created while you also create an area on campus for fitness building and stress relief. Endeavor to create the idea of wellness at work and make it sink deep into the consciousness of your employees.
8. Use feedback and new ideas for future improvements
After putting a good wellness program in place, you should improve on it yearly by enhancing the program via feedbacks and suggestions gathered from the employees over time. There is also need to observe trends in the manner employees respond to and participate in wellness programs. Make it a must do and do not fail to gather feedback and ideas for future fine-tuning of the program.