What is Corporate Wellness?

Wellness has become quite the buzz word over the last few years. Google “corporate wellness” and you’re likely to get overwhelmed with the possibilities. But what is corporate wellness, who’s defining it and who can provide it?

Defining Corporate Wellness
All kinds of health related elements have been dubbed a “wellness program”; from flu shots, to chair massages, to biometric screenings, to educational flyers in paychecks, to webinars, to Biggest Loser contests… and the list goes on. Defining corporate wellness is like trying to fish with a net that has holes… you’re bound to miss something. Therefore, when the US government set up a grant for small employers, they gave wellness program designers plenty of latitude to work with. To qualify for the grant, your wellness program needs to have the following components in place:

• Be available to all employees
• Health awareness initiatives including health education, preventative screenings, and health risk assessments
• Efforts to maximize employee engagement and participation
• Education in the forms of counseling, seminars, online programs and self-help materials to encourage changing unhealthy behaviors and lifestyle choices
• Workplace policies to encourage healthy lifestyles, healthy eating, increased physical activity and improved mental health

Implementation of your Corporate Wellness program
It should be clear that you’ll need a number of different skill sets to implement your wellness program – and sometimes you can find an employee or a vendor that has the whole package.

• Project Manager – Someone who can coordinate all the nuts and bolts to deliver the service to your employees. They need to be able to conceptualize the project, coordinate marketing efforts, answer questions that will get asked and summarize the success or failure of the program for management.
• Health Professional – This person has a solid background in health & wellness. For liability reasons alone, you want to make sure that your health & medical education is based on science and the latest research. The last thing you want to find out is that an employee was put in harm’s way because the educator “just didn’t realize”.
• Human Resources – Going beyond HIPAA compliance, make sure that your wellness program can weather the HR litmus test. As well intentioned as most wellness programs are, it’s still easy to go astray and offend someone.

Read about how to choose a corporate wellness vendor.