Health and Wellness Leads : 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 workplace and injury prevention for staff members.

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

While safety and lifestyle programs are two aspects that contribute to the health of workers, 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 agreed upon that the workplace itself has a powerful affect on people’s health. When individuals are satisfied with their job, they are more constructive and tend to be healthier. When employees feel that the environment at work is negative, they feel stressed. Stress has a sizable impact on employee mental and physical health, and in turn, on productivity.

Consultant Graham Lowe has identified five 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 corporations must truly care about the wellness of their workers.

Businesses today who want to attract and retain great employees have leaders who understand the importance between employee satisfaction and employee health and believe that workplace wellness is a employer 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 staff members are looking for jobs that compensate well, have great benefits, are interesting, and include great health and safety programs. So in today’s competitive hiring market, it’s become more important than ever for corporations to enhance job satisfaction and make sure that staff members enjoy being on the job. Workplace wellness benefits both employers and staff members.

How does workplace wellness benefit the business?

A workplace wellness program can help a organization to:

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

How Do Workplace Wellness Programs Profit workers?

workers of businesses that have a Company Health Promotion Program are likely to have:

• increased awareness and knowledge of ways to improve their health;
• a better (less stressful) workplace;
• increased protection from injury;
• improved health and well-being;
• higher morale and greater job satisfaction;
• increased work rate and performance at work;
• reduced personal healthcare expenditures; and
• a more relaxed/flexible approach to health concerns.

Both employers and staff members have a responsibility for organizing a healthy workplace. Employees are expected to arrive at work in great health, and the employer is expected to offer an environment that allows staff members to maintain great 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 creating a “people first” approach to doing business. It’s about taking care of workers, starting a beneficial work environment, and paying attention to the factors that keep workers healthy and happy at work. A good Company Health Promotion Program has an influence on employees’ mental, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual wellness.