Creating a Corporate Health Promotion Program
The workplace setting is a powerful, but frequently overlooked, element in managing worker health. Here we will identify some of the best-practices in establishing a Corporate Health Promotion Program that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows workers to take charge of their own health. For example, a Corporate Health Promotion Program that includes a smoke-free workplace policy increases the likelihood that workers will try to quit tobacco use and will quit smoking successfully. Similarly, a Corporate Health Promotion Program that includes discounting healthy foods in your cafeteria and vending machines helps increase workers’ consumption of healthy foods which supports your investment in disease management programs for workers with diabetes, heart disease or hypertension. The following will guide you through the ten key steps in establishing a Corporate Health Promotion Program and workplace setting that encourages worker health.
In an era of rising medical care costs and fierce competition, organizations have a vested interest in the health of their workers. Research has found that, on average, workers with healthy behaviors (such as not smoking or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower medical care expenses, are absent from work less frequently, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than workers with unhealthy behaviors.
Corporate Health Promotion Program: Capturing Upper Management Support
Corporate Health Promotion Program support from the highest level of upper management is essential to your success in establishing a culture of health within your workplace. Look for Corporate Health Promotion Program support from a leader who is respected by and can influence other leaders. (It’s not important that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Corporate Health Promotion Program.) You will be relying on this culture-of-health champion to advocate for changes that you recommend and to ensure the organization allocates adequate Corporate Health Promotion Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the workplace policies, physical setting, and social norms.
Obtain Corporate Health Promotion Program Staff and Financing
The creation and maintenance of a Corporate Health Promotion Program within your corporation needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your corporation is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Corporate Health Promotion Program. There are a number of ways to find an individual with the needed skills to guide and support your corporation’s Corporate Health Promotion Program.
Creating facilities and Corporate Health Promotion Program policies, such as those allowing workers to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be expensive, but it does require adequate and sustained funding. If possible, include the creation of a workplace setting that supports the Corporate Health Promotion Program as a permanent part of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your corporation.
Staff Member Involvement in the Corporate Health Promotion Program
Pulling together a representative group of staff members to advise your corporation’s Corporate Health Promotion Program ensures that improvements in workplace facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of staff members. In addition, these workers can support as the front-line Corporate Health Promotion Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.
Develop a Corporate Health Promotion Program “Brand” and Vision
A Corporate Health Promotion Program vision and a brand are powerful first steps in moving a Corporate Health Promotion Program from an idea to a reality. What would you like your workplace environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Corporate Health Promotion Program vision statement summarizes for all (workers and leaders alike) the reasons for establishing a Corporate Health Promotion Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between worker health and your corporation’s ability to achieve its overall mission.
Branding your corporation’s Corporate Health Promotion Program conveys to workers that the corporation’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Choose a Corporate Health Promotion Program name and logo that resonate with workers. Then use that brand on all Corporate Health Promotion Program communications with workers about the policies, facilities and programs your corporation offers to promote healthy behaviors.
Evaluate Your Current Corporate Health Promotion Program Situation
Exactly how your corporation establishes a Corporate Health Promotion Program that encourages healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your corporation and employee population.
Evaluate how the current workplace facilities, policies, and unwritten norms support — or discourage — healthy behaviors.
Gather information on the health and health-related behaviors of your employee population. The most common method is by using a validated health risk assessment. If you don’t have data specific to your workers, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data. Note: Information on staff members’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.
Determine Corporate Health Promotion Program Goals and Priorities
Use what you’ve discovered about the health of the employees and about your current workplace setting to determine your corporation’s Corporate Health Promotion Program priorities. From those Corporate Health Promotion Program priorities, define clear and measurable Corporate Health Promotion Program goals for improving the health of the employees and your corporation’s culture. Well written goals will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.
Choose Corporate Health Promotion Program Procedures
Focus your corporation’s Corporate Health Promotion Program resources (time, energy and money) on strategies that are most likely to produce results: an increase in healthy eating, an increase in physical activity, and a reduction in tobacco use. There’s no need to guess at what might work. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of studies and has identified the Corporate Health Promotion Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Corporate Health Promotion Program strategies are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.
The formula for Corporate Health Promotion Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.
Implement Corporate Health Promotion Program Procedures
Once you’ve chosen your Corporate Health Promotion Program Procedures, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline. The “right” amount of time for implementing each Corporate Health Promotion Program strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your corporation. Work plans keep your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to start a Corporate Health Promotion Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.
Educate and Communicate About the Corporate Health Promotion Program
Ensure workers are aware of the Corporate Health Promotion Program opportunities you’ve provided. Planning your Corporate Health Promotion Program communications allows you to communicate regularly with workers without overwhelming them at any one time.
Monitor and Report Your Corporate Health Promotion Program Results
At the same time that you plan your Corporate Health Promotion Program Procedures, think about how you’ll measure success. It’s much easier to gather information – or to start systems for collecting information — before you implement a Corporate Health Promotion Program strategy rather than as an afterthought. Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in worker morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in rates of absenteeism or medical care claims.
Report both your Corporate Health Promotion Program successes in building a healthy workplace environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides workers time for walking during the workday), and Corporate Health Promotion Program successes in getting staff members to take charge of their health (an increase in the number of workers who contacted the stop-smoking program, or an increase in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).