Employee Health Promotion

Group backing and encouragement can be very beneficial in supporting employees make healthy changes. Create situations, peer groups, or information avenues where the expertise and experiences of coworkers can be shared with others. Some ideas for providing worksite backing for healthy changes include:

• Workers can be asked to voluntarily submit ideas, advice, and strategies related to particular healthy practices they have successfully implemented in their lives. For example, ex-smokers can be asked to submit ideas about what worked for them when they quit; then those ideas can be shared in newsletters, handouts, classes, etc.
• Topics like weight management, stress management, managing change, increasing exercise, etc. lend themselves to this development of collective wisdom sharing.
• Behavior change backing groups, created based on employee interest in making healthy change, can meet on regularly to share ideas, resources, support, etc. Employee Health Promotion Programs can offer some assistance and facilitation in getting a group started. The group then itself takes charge of keeping the group going. Periodically the wellness program can offer to bring in a speaker on a topic relevant to the group. Be sure to help the group agree upon ground rules that everyone agrees to before the group is left on its own.