Selecting a Wellness Corporation.

When staffing your health promotion program you need to consider whether to hire a wellness staff or contract with wellness specialists from outside your business.

Small and medium size workplaces do not generally have a wellness professional on staff. If your workplace is in this category, you’ll need to contract with providers outside your business.

Large companies have a few choices. They can hire a staff solely for the health promotion program, they can contract with outside wellness providers, or they can 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 Company Staff

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

They could be nurses, dietitians, health educators, counselors, exercise physiologists, or have other backgrounds. But further to their primary training, they know something about all wellness topics, including tobacco use, 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 specialists at workplaces fall into three broad categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.

o  Wellness screeners introduce staff members to the wellness program, take health measurements, collect health-related information, provide initial counseling, and help staff members define for themselves what they need and want in a wellness program.

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

o  Health Promotion instructors teach courses and minigroups on different health topics.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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