Selecting a Wellness Business.

When staffing your wellness program you need to consider whether to hire a wellness staff or contract with wellness professionals from outside your corporation.

Small and medium size worksites don’t normally have a wellness specialist on staff. When your worksite is in this category, you’ll need to contract with providers outside your organization.

Large companies have a few choices. They can hire a staff solely for the wellness program, they can contract with outside wellness providers, or they are able to use a combination of internal staff and outside providers.

When choosing  a provider some key questions in the areas of staff, wellness program structure, process, and effectiveness need to be addressed. Each of these key questions is discussed in the following sections.

Wellness Corporation Staff

Health experts become wellness experts when they are trained in the full range of wellness activities. Wellness experts are generalists who come from a broad variety of backgrounds and schooling.

They could be nurses, dietitians, health educators, counselors, exercise physiologists, or have other backgrounds. But also to their main training, they know something about all wellness topics, including use of tobacco, stress, exercise, and nutrition.

They also know how to engage and support individuals  in making and sustaining health improvements and have good individuals  skills.

Generally, wellness professionals at workplaces fall into three broad categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.

o  Health Promotion screeners introduce personnel to the health promotion program, take health measurements, collect health-related information, provide initial counseling, and help personnel define for themselves what they need and want in a health promotion program.

o  Wellness counselors work with personnel after the screening to help them create and carry out a plan to reduce their risks and improve their health.

o  Wellness instructors teach courses and minigroups on different health topics.

A wellness program in a small company could be staffed by a single staff individuals who fills all three roles. Bigger worksites will use different people  to fill these roles.

When choosing  staff or choosing  among wellness companies, ask the following questions -

o  Do prospective workforce have a range of health backgrounds that will provide appropriate expertise in the topics to be addressed?

o  Have prospective employees functioned well as wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and/or wellness instructors?

o  Will this staff include individuals  from the ethnic and racial backgrounds found in your staff member population?

o  Is each worker comfortable with the range of backgrounds found in your worker population, and able to communicate effectively with the various social and educational levels of your employees?

o  Do personnel have a warm, but specialist, counseling style when interacting with employees?