Employee Health Promotion

The Employee Health Promotion Committee ought to set out a plan for the entire year that outlines accomplishing goals/objectives, as well as provides details for marketing and evaluating the program. The plan is the detailed map of what types of programs will be available, when and where they will be scheduled, how they will be marketed and evaluated, and what the budget is. It is valuable to plan your wellness activities based on your goals/objectives, as well as the budget since different strategies will yield different outcomes. For example, if your mission is to broaden awareness on a topic, then distributing handouts or scheduling a one-time education session may be appropriate. However, if your objective is to change behavior, then different strategies may be necessary, such as ongoing weekly meetings and support groups. Click here to link to Program Design Options for additional ideas.

Employee Health Promotion Marketing

Now is the time to plan your marketing strategies! How can you market the wellness program and ongoing activities? No matter how you decide to, market often, keep it fresh, and remind employees repeatedly! Consider having an overall kickoff exercise to inform everyone of the wellness program. Senior Leadership ought to offer the introduction or invitation so that all employees are cognizant of their backing and leadership in the program. Possible marketing methods:

• Sending email messages, including reminders
• Design bulletins
• Displaying bulletin board postings
• Writing articles
• Sending letters or
• Mailing special invitations.

Other Employee Health Promotion Considerations:

• Is the Employee Health Promotion promoted to all employees or to a specific target audience?
• Do you have a Employee Health Promotion champion (someone who is joined with different groups in the organization, and well respected) who can help in your promotion efforts?
• If your marketing efforts aren’t working, do you have a way to revisit and adjust your strategy?
• How will you determine performance and evaluate your program? And how will you gather the information necessitated to evaluate your program?

Topics most often included in Employee Health Promotion Programs:

• Nutrition
• Physical Activity/Exercise
• Tobacco Use Cessation
• Bone Health
• Cardiovascular Health
• Healthy Back
• Stress Reduction
• Chronic Disease Awareness & Prevention
• Self-care; Wise Healthcare Consumer
• Screening Services (BMI, Blood Pressure, bone density, cholesterol, glucose, posture, vision, and other…)
• Ergonomic Assessments
• Health Fairs
• Kids/family Events
• Others issues that employees have interest in

The issues and type of Employee Health Promotion planned depend on the needs and interest, central objective and resources available. Program Design Options include awareness programs such as handouts and/or education sessions, behavior change programs such as tobacco cessation and weight loss classes, and environmental or business backing such as no smoking policies or healthy selections in vending machines. The programs planned also depend on the demographics of your workforce. If you have a young, healthy workforce, you may want to focus the wellness attention on keeping employees healthy and not need to screen for disease. Instead you might want to focus on healthy lifestyle behavior such as exercise and great diet to prevent the on-set of disease. Click here for more information on strategies for keeping employees well, identifying disease early, or returning employees to work who already have a chronic conditions. It is also valuable to consider, and plan how you will evaluate the performance of your wellness program. The system needs to be shown for tracking certain data and recording programs depending on the program goals/objectives. Step 7 discusses program evaluation in more detail. And Step 6 will launch your program!