Drug Education and Intervention in the Workplace

Incentives bolster employees to adopt beneficial behaviors or maintain an existing beneficial behavior that may potentially help the employee stay healthy and live longer. Adopting beneficial health behavior is fundamentally what wellness is about.

Incentives can be used to stimulate participation rates, help individuals complete a Company Wellness Program, or help individuals shift or adhere to healthy lifestyles. Providing incentives and rewards will send an important message to the workers that your employer is committed to supporting them with working on their health. It also plays a important role in motivating individuals to take part.

Tips on how to choose appropriate incentives:

• Identify through an employee survey what incentives they value.
• Identify what incentives and rewards the employer can offer as well as what the budget will allow.
• Make sure that every attendant who achieves a objective receives some recognition.
• Avoid offering incentives for the “best” or the “most.”
• Avoid using food as a reward.
• Use incentives/rewards to reward your Employee Health Promotion Program, through logos and branding.

When beginning a all-inclusive Employee Wellness Program, make sure that it consists of a variety of awareness, lifestyle modification, supportive environment programs, policies and activities that target risk behaviors, and the needs and interests of the workers. It will be important to review and revise existing policies governing such areas as smoking sections and the employee cafeteria.

Tips on starting a Company Health Promotion Program:

• Establish activities based on your intended goals and objectives approaching the specific needs of your workers. Focus on those subject matters that are of greatest interest to your workers and the greatest needs of your business, in that order. Avoid subject matters with narrow appeal.
• Keep it simple. Design the Company Health Promotion Program so it’s easy for the participants to understand and track.
• Integrate a combination of activities to include awareness, educational, and behavior components.
• Select activities in which every employee can take part.

Ideas for your Corporate Wellness Program:

• Challenges. Activities that focus on practicing a desired behavior that continues for 4-8 weeks and focuses on specific issues (such as physical exercise, diet, or stress management).
• Learning experiences. This includes classes, videos, and classes.
• Behavior changes (such as smoking cessation). You may or may not offer interventions at the worksite. Still, you ought to bolster people to make lifestyle changes that they want to make even without an external incentive.
• Education on disease management. By way of example, support and education groups for diabetes, high Blood Pressure (BP), etc.
• Learing new skills. For example, CPR and first aid.
• Preventive screenings like Blood Pressure (BP), cholesterol, and vision.

Source: Adapted from the Building Healthy Texans Job Site Wellness Toolkit.

Create objectives

Goals are general guidelines that explain what you want to achieve. Objectives define strategies or steps to take to attain the identified intention.

A wellness program ought to have a “destination”. Use the outcome of your surveys and your wellness committee’s mission statement as guides. Consider these ideas:

• Focus on making health information and learning resources readily available to workers
• Focus on group activities so employees can work together to support and advocate healthier lifestyles
• Create a wellness program that is visible to both employees and to your customers
• Focus on written policies and instructions
• Set objectives for your wellness program.

Review Guidelines for Writing Goals.

Goals Should Be

Specific – A goal is specific when it provides a description of what will be accomplished. It will state exactly what the company intends to accomplish. It must be written so that it can be easily and clearly communicated. A specific goal will make it easier for those writing objectives and action plans to address the following questions:

• Who is to be involved?
• What is to be accomplished?
• Where is it to be done?
• When is it to be done?

Measurable – A goal is measurable if it is quantifiable. To determine if your goal is measurable, ask questions such as: How much? How many? How will I know when it is accomplished?

Attainable – You can attain most any intention you set when you plan your steps wisely and establish a time frame that allows you to carry out those steps. Goals that may have seemed far away and out of reach eventually move closer and become attainable.

Realistic – Realistic, means “do-able.” The intention needs to be realistic for your employer and where the employer is at the moment. A intention to take out all the high fat items in the snack machines may not be realistic for your employer right now; a better intention would be to substitute some of the chips, candy bars and pies for pretzels, yogurt and dried fruit.

Timely – Finally, a goal must have a timeframe: for next week, in three months, by age 35. It must have a starting and ending point. It should also have some intermediate points at which progress can be assessed. Limiting the time in which a goal must be accomplished helps to focus effort toward its performance. If you don’t set a time, the commitment is too vague. It tends not to happen because you feel you can start at any time. Without a time limit, there’s no urgency to start taking action now.

Effective wellness programs are designed to meet the needs and interests of the workers. Ask workers what they are interested in, and what needs they have. People are more willing to participate and support wellness efforts if they are involved in the decision-making process.

When planning a survey, keep the following hints in mind:

• Ask mostly closed form questions, especially if you will be sending the survey to a sizable number of workers. Closed form questions offer specific choices and are easy to tabulate.
• Invite comments, ideas and recommendations, or ask open-ended questions at the end of the survey. Open-ended items are more difficult to summarize.
• Include a brief explanatory cover letter with the survey with the signature of the employer president. Make sure to include a statement about confidentiality and anonymity.
• Ask a group of representative staff members to review the survey before it is distributed. Find out if the questions will be understood by staff members and won’t be objected to.
• Include demographic information at the beginning, or end of the survey (gender, age, shift, site, department, etc.).
• Conduct a random drawing for a valued incentive item for all those who returned the survey. This could boost the response rate.

One rule to consider concerning surveys is if you have fewer than 500 staff members, everyone ought to receive one. The benefit of everyone receiving a survey can be valuable. If you have over 500 staff members, a sample of the work population from each department will suffice. The higher the response, the more valid and reliable the results. A minimum response of 40 percent to 50 percent is considered valuable.

A vital first step in organizing your company’s wellness program is the formation of a Corporate Wellness Program Committee. The focus of the Corporate Wellness Program Committee is to plan, reward, and implement the program. The Corporate Wellness Program Committee establishes continuity, motivation, and broad ownership of the program as well as supports an great vehicle for communication.

So who should be on the Company Health Promotion Program Committee? Consider appointing the following people/departments to your Company Health Promotion Program Committee:

• Upper Management within your organization
• Union representatives
• Human Resources (HR) department
• Employee Assistance Program(EAP)
• Information technology
• Communications
• Health and safety department
• workers interested in health and wellbeing

Building a successful Employee Health Promotion Program requires employee time as well as money. Some larger employers may invest 20 hours per week for three to six months preparing all the steps prior to launching a Employee Health Promotion Program.

Anywhere from 4 to ten people meeting monthly equals a Worksite Wellness Program Committee. A mission statement for the Worksite Wellness Program Committee should be developed by the second meeting. This way, everyone knows what the Worksite Wellness Program Committee is working toward.

Once a wellness program has been established, the committee’s size and meeting schedule may change. Still, no fewer than 4 members ought to meet at least quarterly so the group – and the wellness program – does not fade away.

Support from senior staff is essential to building a efficacious wellness program! Visible senior staff support is one of the most vital factors in the success of a workplace Corporate Health Promotion Program. Management executives are responsible for making sure that the corporation meets its objectives. They can support additional assistance by supporting you to link your Corporate Health Promotion Program objectives to corporation outcomes, thereby positioning Corporate Health Promotion Program as a fundamental part of the corporation.

It is important to create support and excitement for the program from all echelons of the company including upper management, mid-level management, and grass-root staff members.

The challenge for any Corporate Health Promotion Program coordinator is convincing management about the potential value of Corporate Health Promotion Program to the organization and conceptualizing how Corporate Health Promotion Program pushes can influence the organization in a meaningful manner. The American Journal of Health Promotion is a great resource to assist you with obtaining convincing information on the advantages of a Corporate Health Promotion Program.

Company Health Promotion Program reinforcement from management can come in many different ways:

• Involvement in the wellness program planning process
• Distribution of funding for the wellness program
• Support for time given to the wellness program
• Participation in wellness activities
• Leadership by management, such as the distribution of a letter of backing for the program.
• Flexibility of employee schedules to accommodate wellness activities

The first step in beginning your wellness/Company Health Promotion Program is to know your organization and how Company Health Promotion Program will fit into the current structure. By researching your organization’s history with similar programs and eliciting feedback from co-workers, you can discover the best solution for your organization.

Worksite Health Promotion Program: Research Questions

• Find out if Employee Wellness Program has been done in the past. If so, what worked and what did not?
• Was it widely accepted?
• Was programming successful? Why or why not?
• What does your company hope to gain from implementing a Corporate Wellness Program?

Answers to these questions will help you start the process of creating a culture of wellness within your organization. It is imperative that you evaluate the environment before starting a program.

The expenditures of medical care have been rising more than 10 percent each year for several years. A substantial amount of the money invested in the medical care system treats costly illnesses and diseases.

• Approximately 95 percent of the $1.4 trillion that we spend as a nation on health goes to direct medical care services, while about 5 percent is allocated to preventing disease and promoting health.
• Potentially, 50 percent to 70 percent of all diseases are avoidable as they are associated with modifiable health risks.
• In an effort to optimize employee health, cut avoidable medical care utilization and enhance work achievement, and in turn lower medical care expenditures and better employee satisfaction and retention, many employers are developing, or are interested in developing, Workplace Wellness Programs for workers.

The advantages of workplace wellness are well documented. More than 120 research studies repeatedly show themes such as improvements in health outcomes coupled with high returns on investment (ROI). Some primary findings include the following:

• Savings of $3.48 in reduced healthcare costs per dollar invested.
• Savings of $5.82 in reduce absenteeism costs per dollar invested.
• ROIs of at least $3 to $8 per dollar invested within five years of program implementation.
• Lifestyle behavior modification programs: $3 to $6 return on investment within 2 to 5 years.
• Self care, decision backing programs: $2 to $3 return on investment within a year.
• Disease management programs: $7 to $10 ROI within a year.

By offering health improvement programs, companies are not only providing an additional service for staff members, but they are also gaining monetarily. Furthermore, the influence of a health improvement program goes beyond lowered medical care cost and return on investment. A health improvement program can affect productiveness, absenteeism, morale, recruitment success, turnover, and medical care expenditures.

• Source: Rees, C., and Finch, R. (2004). Health Improvement: A comprehensive guide to beginning, launching and evaluating worksite programs. National Business Group on Health, 1 (1), 1-7.

According to the American Journal of Health Promotion, “Health promotion is the science and art of helping people alter their lifestyle to move toward a state of ideal health. Optimal health is defined as a balance of physical, emotional, social, spiritual, and intellectual health. Lifestyle modification can be facilitated through a combination of efforts to enhance awareness, alter behavior, and set up environments that support good health practices. Of the three, supportive environments will probably have the greatest influence in producing lasting change.”

Worksite Health Promotion Program: Action Steps

The process of creating a Company Wellness Program involves:

• Identifying the current health status of your workers
• Determining the appropriate programs and interventions to offer
• Promoting and launching the programs
• Building in motivational incentives/rewards
• Measuring the effect
• Revising programs based on assessment outcomes

It may even include beginning policies and procedures that support employee participation in wellness activities at your workplace (such as flextime).

Steps to Starting a Worksite Health Promotion Program

• Conduct an business assessment
• Get upper management reinforcement
• Establish a Employee Wellness Program Committee
• Obtain employee input
• Create goals
• Design and enable program activities
• Select incentives/rewards
• Review outcomes

One of the ways the government plans to improve the nation’s health is through accross the board Company Health Promotion Programs. According to the United States Department of Health and Human Services, these programs may help staff members live healthier lifestyles by creating supportive work environments and offering awareness, education and behavior change programs. In fact, one of the goals/objectives of Healthy People 2010, a set of health objectives for the nation to achieve by the year 2010, is to improve the proportion of staff members that participate in a accross the board Company Health Promotion Program at their workplace to 75 percent.

5 Ways to Assess and Improve Your employees’ Health

Emotional health is a state of wellness that comes from understanding and acknowledging our emotions and finding appropriate ways to express them. As employees, we often bring emotional problems from our childhood or current family life into the workplace because we haven’t dealt with them effectively outside of work. This can seriously damage workplace relationships and lead to poor performance and harmful feelings all around.

Many tools and techniques exist for helping us improve our emotional health. Some of the most common are given below, with real-life case histories illustrating their use. If an unpleasant mood or feeling persists over a length of time, don’t hesitate to seek out a qualified professional. Worksite Health Promotion Programs usually have professional support already in place as part of their services.

1. Health Coaching / Health Counseling:
One of the hallmarks of emotional health is the willingness to ask for help when we need it. Confidential professional help, the coaching and counseling offered by employee assistance or wellness programs, can provide an external source of strength and insight for “working out” emotionally-based concerns rather than “working them in” to your work.

2. Self-help Groups:
Self-help groups are designed to aid people in emotional situations in which they feel alone. The purpose of these groups is twofold: to allow people to safely feel and express their emotions, and to help break their isolation at work and/or in society at large and reintegrate them into society with the reinforcement of a peer group.

The classic self-help group is Alcoholics Anonymous, but thanks to technology, it’s possible to associate with others that have common health challenges, no matter how unique the situation. People are taking advantage of tele-conference groups and social websites, such as sparkpeople.com and revolutionhealth.com. Employee Wellness Programs often have such groups available through online or telephone support. Progressive corporate wellness provider Exan Wellness, for example, offers teleconference cell groups and moderated wellness forums for interacting with others in a supportive, confidential and anonymous environment. People with shared challenges get together and discuss the emotional challenges they are facing at work or in other areas of their lives and work through change together.

3. Journaling: Journaling is frequently recommended by counsellors as a way to help identify and process emotions. People record their emotions in writing as they experience them, in whatever form they wish. By helping the writer gain greater emotional clarity, journaling can help in making more emotionally informed decisions. In much the same way, letter writing enables people to identify and process the emotions they feel in relation to others. The letter need not be sent or its contents shared: it simply supplies a place for the expression of feelings.

An 18-year-old “army brat,” Brent has always done well at school, academically and athletically. But in his last year of high school, something seems to have happened to him. He has lost all interest in school, becoming moody and withdrawn.

Brent describes to his guidance counselor all the times he had to move when he was growing up. Each move wrenched him from his friends and forced him to play the role of the “new kid on the block.” The counselor suggests that Brent write letters to the friends he has missed over the years telling them how he felt. Finally, he has a chance to say a proper goodbye.

4. Assess Your Emotional Health: Corporations that seek to boost employees’ interpersonal skills, or emotional intelligence in the workplace are more efficacious, according to ground-breaking journalist Daniel Goleman. And emotional intelligence is the buzzword in workplaces these days. Some Company Health Promotion Programs have information about emotional intelligence, or emotional health assessments. Seek out more information about emotional intelligence for better corporate wellness.

5. Friendships/Support Systems: Friendships allow people to feel supported in their emotional journeys. At the same time, they give people an opportunity to advance their empathetic skills. These skills are also valuable for worksite health. When we are empathic with fellow workers, we help them resolve negative or unhealthy emotions. New friendships are made through hobbies, classes, clubs, or even through internet based groups. Many people are finding emotional satisfaction by connecting or re-connecting with friends through Facebook and other social websites.

At times workplace stress that is not dealt with in a healthy manner can be brought home. A 36-year-old mother of three, Sarah, wants to be a wonderful wife, a wonderful mother, and a success at her work. One day, drained after a long day at work, she shouted at her rambunctious children and threatened to hit her youngest son. Her behavior horrified her. To make matters worse, she believes she is a failure at her work as well as at motherhood. She watches with jealousy as younger co-workers advance much more rapidly up the corporate ladder despite having less experience than she has.

On the advice of a counselor, she decides to take time out for herself and take a course for amateur painters. It doesn’t take long before she strikes up a friendship with a single mom in the class. She once led a life very similar to Sarah’s before managing to achieve a better balance between work and family. Her new friend becomes a much-needed sounding board for Sarah and offers her perspectives on her life that she hadn’t considered before.