In yesterday’s Advisor, we learned the basics of building a winning wellness plan from consultant Mari Ryan, CEO and founder of AdvancingWellness. Today, she elaborates on the steps needed to put your wellness program into action.
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Ryan, who recently shared her expertise in a webinar presented by BLR® and HR Hero®, is a certified Worksite Wellness Program Consultant and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Worksite Wellness Council of Massachusetts.
The 7 Steps to Your Organization’s Comprehensive Wellness Program
Here are Ryan’s essentials to building a successful wellness program:
1. Have a formal plan. While you may not always be sure which direction to head at first, your initiative must have a formal, written plan with clearly established goals. Not only will it make your wellness program more effective but it will also establish credibility, link wellness to other programs within the company, and greatly increase your return on investment.
2. Outline a budget. Without specific resources allocated to the program, its impact will be greatly diminished.
3. Designate a champion. A great wellness program should have someone who’s really devoted to doing the work, believes that the program and its goals should be a priority (rather than just random programming), and who can inspire other employees to follow suit. This person will need support from senior leadership to make this happen, says Ryan.
Looking to launch your own winning wellness program? Start on December 15, 2014, with a new interactive webinar, Workplace Wellness Programs: How to Motivate Your Employees to Better Health. Learn More.
4. Formally communicate the program to the employees. If your employees don’t know about wellness and how it relates to their work, any program to promote it won’t be successful!
5. Collect data. This information will tell you exactly what your employees need. Common sources of internal and external data include employee demographics, healthcare claims data, and surveys (which could include anything from health assessments to employee engagement surveys to culture audits).
6. Create targeted interventions based on your data. Based on what you’re seeing in the data, you can target specific issues in your workplace through awareness and education programs, behavior change programs, or adjustment of workplace policies.
7. Measure your outcomes and impact. We’ve often heard, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” says Ryan. Ensure you have metrics in place to determine both how your wellness program is succeeding and areas in which it could use improvement.
If it’s implemented effectively, a good wellness program can help keep your workforce healthy, engaged, and productive. How to get there? Fortunately there’s timely help in the form of BLR’s new webinar—Workplace Wellness Programs: How to Motivate Your Employees to Better Health. In just 90 minutes, on December 15, 2014, you’ll learn everything you need to know about motivating employees to actively participate in wellness programs.
Register today for this interactive webinar.
A healthier staff is a more productive staff. Join us December 15, 2014, for a new interactive webinar, Workplace Wellness Programs: How to Motivate Your Employees to Better Health. Earn 1.5 hours in HRCI Recertification Credit. Register Now.
By participating in this interactive webinar, you’ll learn:
- Strategies for developing a marketing and communication plan for the wellness program
- How to communicate with employees and executives, whether you’re just starting, well under way or want to reinvigorate a program
- Tactics for generating enthusiasm within your ranks to get employees excited about taking part
- The role of incentives in encouraging participation
- How to make competition a healthy motivator
- Approaches to fostering intrinsic motivation
- How to keep the momentum going once your program is running
- Case studies from organizations that have developed successful wellness programs
- And much more!
Register now for this event risk-free.
Monday, December 15, 2014
1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. (Eastern)
12:30 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. (Central)
11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. (Mountain)
10:30 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (Pacific)
Approved for Recertification Credit
This program has been approved for 1.5 credit hours toward recertification through the Human Resource Certification Institute (HRCI).
Join us on December 15, 2014—you’ll get the in-depth Workplace Wellness Programs: How to Motivate Your Employees to Better Health webinar AND you’ll get all of your particular questions answered by our experts.
Train Your Entire Staff
As with all BLR/HRhero webinars:
- Train all the staff you can fit around a conference phone.
- Get your (and their) specific phoned-in or emailed questions answered in Q&A sessions that follow the presentation.