The Worksite Health Promotion Committee ought to set out a plan for the entire year that outlines accomplishing goals and objectives, as well as supports details for marketing and evaluating the program.
The plan is the detailed map of what types of programs will be offered, 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 and objectives, as well as the budget since different strategies will provide different outcomes.
For example, if your mission is to increase awareness on a topic, then distributing brochures or scheduling a one-time education session may be appropriate. However, if your goal is to change behavior, then different strategies may be necessary, such as ongoing weekly meetings and support groups.
Worksite Health Promotion Marketing
Now is the time to coordinate your marketing strategies! How can you market the wellness program and ongoing activities? No matter how you decide to, market frequently, keep it fresh, and remind staff members repeatedly!
Consider having an overall kickoff activity to let everyone know about the wellness program. Upper Management ought to provide the introduction or invitation so that all staff members are knowledgeable about their support and leadership in the program. Possible marketing methods:
- Distributing email messages, including reminders
- Establish bulletins
- Putting up bulletin board postings
- Writing articles
- Mailing letters or
- Distributing special invitations.
Other Worksite Health Promotion Considerations:
- Is the Worksite Health Promotion promoted to all staff members or to a specific group?
- Do you have a Worksite 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 change your plan?
- How will you determine effectiveness and evaluate your program? And how will you collect the information necessitated to evaluate your program?
Topics most frequently included in Worksite Health Promotion :
- Nutrition
- Physical Activity/Exercise
- Tobacco Use Cessation
- Bone Health
- Cardiovascular Health
- Healthy Back
- Stress Reduction
- Chronic Disease Awareness & Prevention
- Self-care; Wise Medical Care Consumer
- Screening Services (BMI, Blood Pressure (BP), bone density, cholesterol, glucose, posture, vision, and other…)
- Ergonomic Assessments
- Health Fairs
- Kids/family Events
- Others subject matters that staff members have interest in
The subject matters and type of Worksite Health Promotion planned hinge upon the needs and interest, overriding goal and resources available. Program Design Options include awareness programs such as brochures and/or education sessions, behavior modification programs such as tobacco cessation and weight loss classes, and environmental or organization support such as no smoking policies or healthy selections in snack machines.
The programs planned also hinge upon the demographics of your workforce. If you have a young, healthy workforce, you may want to focus the wellness attention on keeping staff members healthy and not need to screen for disease.
Instead you might want to focus on healthy lifestyle behavior such as exercise and good nourishment to prevent the start of disease. Click here for more information on strategies for keeping staff members well, identifying disease early, or returning staff members to work who already have a chronic disease.
It is also valuable to consider, and plan how you will evaluate the effectiveness of your wellness program. The system needs to be shown for tracking certain data and recording activities depending on the program goals and objectives.
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This is an excellent article. The only thing I find missing in Corporate health programs is a strategy. Marketing is fine, but without a strategy marketing is a series of events not structured to a vision or end result. My recent book http://strategyforfitness.com/wordpress/?p=70 closes this gap. Keep up the good work. Articles like this can help to reduce health care cost.