Employee Wellness Newsletter : What is a Corporate Health Promotion Program?

Workplace wellness is in the process of evolving.

Early efforts to create healthy workplaces focused on safety at the worksite and injury prevention for workers.

More recently, programs are designed to support  workers to choose healthier behaviors like being more physically active or quitting smoking. Campaigns to spread awareness, educational sessions to expand knowledge, opportunities to acquire new skills, and changes to policies to make it easier for workers to make healthy choices are frequently included. This approach is taken because the workplace is a great way to reach individuals, since most adult Canadians invest a sizable part of their day at work.

While safety and lifestyle programs are 2 aspects that contribute to the health of employees, workplace wellness is more effective when a third factor is brought into the equation-the environment at work.

How the workplace affects health.

Increasingly, it is understood that the workplace itself has a powerful affect on people’s health. When individuals are satisfied with their job, they are more beneficial and tend to be healthier. When workers feel that the environment at work is negative, they feel stressed. Stress has a sizable effect on employee mental and physical health, and in turn, on productivity.

Consultant Graham Lowe has identified 5 components of workplace culture that directly affect employees’ health and the health of the business overall-credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and camaraderie. The underlying idea is that businesses must genuinely are concerned about the wellbeing of their employees.

Organizations today who want to attract and keep good employees have leaders who be aware of the connection between employee satisfaction and employee health and believe that workplace wellness is a organization strategy.  Their management practices include making reasonable demands on time and energy, involving employees in decision making, rewarding work well done, openly communicating, and offering support to balance life at work and home.

Employers know that employees are looking for jobs that compensate well, have great benefits, are interesting, and include excellent health and safety programs. So in today’s competitive hiring market, it’s become more valuable than ever for companies to enhance job satisfaction and ensure that employees enjoy being on the job. Workplace wellness benefits both employers and employees.

How does workplace wellness advance the employer?

A workplace wellness program can help a business to:

• attract and keep staff members;
• decrease the expenditures of disability, drugs, and absenteeism;
• lower the effects of a stressful workplace;
• lower health costs or keep them contained; and
• better morale by planning a happy, supportive environment.

How Do Corporate Wellness Programs Profit staff members?

employees of corporations that have a Workplace Health Promotion Program are likely to have:

• increased awareness and knowledge of ways to better their health;
• a better (less stressful) workplace;
• increased protection from injury;
• improved health and wellness;
• higher morale and greater job satisfaction;
• increased productivity and success at work;
• reduced personal medical costs; and
• a more relaxed/flexible approach to health concerns.

Both employers and employees have a responsibility for organizing a healthy workplace. Staff Members are expected to arrive at work in good health, and the corporation is expected to provide an environment that allows employees to maintain good health, enjoy their work, and contribute to the company’s success.

Workplace wellness is much more than a “lunch and learn” program. It’s about developing a “people first” approach to doing business. It’s about taking care of employees, adopting a beneficial work environment, and paying attention to the factors that keep employees healthy and happy at work. A great Corporate Health Promotion Program has an influence on employees’ mental, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual wellness.