Good Corporate Wellness Programs: Individual Wellness

Wellness might be the fatal flaw in your Corporate Wellness Program. Is Wellness part of your strategy? Does worksite wellness stop when your employees leave the office?

Wellness Continuity

If employees don’t have the tools to pursue health and wellness on a Individual level, then it becomes easy for them to “fall off the wagon” and slide back into a unealthy lifestyles. If you have a walking program, for example, it should encourage employees to build walking routes near their homes, perhaps with the cooperation of the neighborhood association or coworkers who live in the neighborhood.

Corporate Wellness Programs: Always on Your Mind

Your Corporate Health Promotion Plan coordinator should have “vacation wellbeing” as part of their job scope. In other words, you don’t want a Corporate Health Promotion Plan to stop at the boundaries of the worksite campus. Instead, integrate Individual health and wellness with your Corporate Wellness Programs.

This will benefit the Corporate Wellness Programs in two ways:

it reduces the chance that the worker will come back to the office feeling unfit, overwhelmed and unable to resume their Corporate Wellness Programs; and
it shows that their organization is just as invested in their Individual health and wellness as they are

Like a marathon, Individual health and wellness is a long-term venture and it’s challenging for anyone to do in isolation. Simply put, it’s easier to maintain your state of health when you know others are depending on you and watching your Individual performance. It’s easier to stick to an physical activity program when you have a jogging partner who wakes you up when you oversleep, or spots you when you’re lifting weights.

Similarly, it’s easier to stick to your Corporate Health Promotion Plan when you know your organization is supporting you and wishing you the best.

Don’t Dictate Individual Health

Just as Wellness surveys serve a vital function in building a Corporate Wellness Program, it’s vitally important that you involve employees in designing an off-site wellness strategy. No one enjoys being told what to do, but everyone enjoys having assistance in tacking tough problems. Make it clear that employees are in charge of their own health and wellness. Your role as their health management partner is to support, advise, counsel, offer resources and information.

Of course, don’t forget that part of Individual health and wellness responsibility is to offer good health risk assessment baselines so employees can proceed safely on the road to better physical fitness.