Wellness Program Incentives

The Corporate Wellness Program Committee must set out a plan for the entire year that outlines accomplishing goals and objectives, as well as supplies 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 important to plan your wellness activities based on your goals and objectives, as well as the budget since different strategies will yield different outcomes.  For example, if your goal is to expand awareness on a topic, then distributing brochures or scheduling a one-time education session may be appropriate.  Nonetheless, if your objective is to change behavior, then different strategies may be necessary, such as ongoing weekly sessions and support groups.  Click here to link to Program Design Options for additional ideas.

Company Health Promotion Program 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 staff members again and again!  Consider having an overall kickoff activity to inform everyone of the wellness program.  Senior Leadership must support the introduction or invitation so that all staff members are knowledgeable about their backing and leadership in the program.

Possible marketing methods:

• Distributing email messages, including reminders
• Organize bulletins,
• Hanging bulletin board postings,
• Writing articles,
• Mailing letters or
• Mailing special invitations.  

Other Company Health Promotion Program Considerations:

• Is the Corporate Health Promotion Program promoted to all employees or to a specific group?
• Do you have a Company Wellness Program champion (someone who is coupled with different groups in the organization, and well respected) who can help in your promotion efforts?
• If your marketing efforts do not seem to be working, do you have a way to revisit and adjust your plan?
• How will you determine success and evaluate your program?  And how will you collect the information needed to evaluate your program?  

Topics most often included in Corporate 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 subject matters that employees have interest in  

The subject matters and type of Workplace Wellness Program planned hinge upon the needs and interest, overall objective and resources available.  Program Design Options   include awareness programs such as brochures and/or education sessions, behavior modification programs such as smoking cessation and weight loss classes, and environmental or corporation backing such as no smoking policies or healthy selections in snack 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 disease.

It is also important 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 events depending on the program goals and objectives.  Step 7 discusses program assessment in more detail.   And Step 6 will launch your program!