Starting a Corporate Health Promotion Plan

The worksite environment is a powerful, but often overlooked, element in managing worker health.  Here we will establish some of the best-practices in creating a Corporate Health Promotion Plan that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows workers to take charge of their own health.  For example, a Corporate Health Promotion Plan that includes a tobacco-free worksite policy improves the likelihood that workers will try to quit tobacco use and will quit using tobacco successfully. Similarly, a Corporate Health Promotion Plan that includes discounting healthy foods in your cafeteria and vending machines helps increase workers’ consumption of healthy foods which supports your investment in disease management programs for workers with diabetes, heart disease or hypertension. The following will guide you through the ten key steps in creating a Corporate Health Promotion Plan and worksite environment that encourages worker health.

In an era of rising medical care costs and intense competition, employers have a vested interest in the health of their workers.  Studies have found that, on average, workers with healthy behaviors (such as not using tobacco or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower medical care expenses, are absent from work less often, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than workers with unhealthy behaviors.

Corporate Wellness Program: Gaining Upper Management Support

Corporate Health Promotion Plan support from the uppermost level of upper management is vital to your success in creating a culture of wellness within your worksite. Look for Corporate Health Promotion Plan support from a leader who is respected by and can sway other leaders. (It’s not necessary that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Corporate Wellness Program.) You will be relying on this culture-of-health champion to advocate for changes that you recommend and to ensure the organization allocates adequate Corporate Health Promotion Plan resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the worksite policies, physical environment, and social norms.

Capture Corporate Health Promotion Plan Staff and Financing

Starting and maintaining a Corporate Health Promotion Plan within your organization needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your organization is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Corporate Wellness Program.  There are a number of ways to find an individual with the required skills to guide and support your organization’s Corporate Wellness Program.

Starting facilities and Corporate Health Promotion Plan policies, such as those allowing workers to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be expensive, but it does require adequate and sustained funding.  If possible, include the creation of a worksite environment that supports the Corporate Health Promotion Plan as a permanent part of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your organization.

Staff Member Involvement in the Corporate Health Promotion Plan

Pulling together a representative group of employees to advise your organization’s Corporate Health Promotion Plan ensures that improvements in worksite facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of employees.   In addition, these workers can support as the front-line Corporate Health Promotion Plan supporters of policies and practices with their peers.

Create a Corporate Health Promotion Plan Vision and “Brand”

A Corporate Health Promotion Plan vision and a brand are powerful first steps in turning a Corporate Health Promotion Plan from an idea to a reality. What would you like your worksite environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Corporate Health Promotion Plan vision statement summarizes for all (workers and leaders alike) the reasons for creating a Corporate Wellness Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between worker health and your organization’s ability to achieve its overall mission.

Branding your organization’s Corporate Health Promotion Plan conveys to workers that the organization’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Select a Corporate Health Promotion Plan name and logo that resonate with workers. Then use that brand on all Corporate Health Promotion Plan communications with workers about the policies, facilities and programs your organization offers to promote healthy behaviors.

Assess Your Current Corporate Health Promotion Plan Situation

Exactly how your organization creates a Corporate Health Promotion Plan that encourages healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your organization and employee population.

Assess how the current worksite facilities, policies, and unwritten norms support — or discourage — healthy behaviors.

Gather information on the health and health-related behaviors of your employee population.  The most common method is by using a validated health risk assessment. If you don’t have data specific to your workers, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data.  Note: Information on employees’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.

Establish Corporate Health Promotion Plan Goals and Priorities

Use what you’ve learned about employee health and about your current worksite environment to determine your organization’s Corporate Health Promotion Plan priorities. From those Corporate Health Promotion Plan priorities, define clear and measurable Corporate Health Promotion Plan goals for improving employee health and your organization’s culture. Well written goals will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.

Select Corporate Health Promotion Plan Strategies

Focus your organization’s Corporate Health Promotion Plan resources (time, energy and money) on strategies that are most likely to produce results:  a rise in healthy eating, a rise in physical activity, and a reduction in tobacco use. There’s no need to guess at what might work. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of studies and has identified the Corporate Health Promotion Plan approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Corporate Health Promotion Plan strategies are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.

The formula for Corporate Health Promotion Plan success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.

Implement Corporate Health Promotion Plan Strategies

Once you’ve chosen your Corporate Health Promotion Plan Strategies, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline.  The “right” amount of time for implementing each Corporate Health Promotion Plan strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your organization.  Work plans maintain your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to create a Corporate Health Promotion Plan stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.

Communicate and Educate About the Corporate Health Promotion Plan

Ensure workers are aware of the Corporate Health Promotion Plan opportunities you’ve provided.   Planning your Corporate Health Promotion Plan communications allows you to communicate regularly with workers without overwhelming them at any one time.

Monitor and Report Your Corporate Health Promotion Plan Results

At the same time that you plan your Corporate Health Promotion Plan Strategies, think about how you’ll measure success.  It’s much easier to gather information – or to create systems for collecting information — before you implement a Corporate Health Promotion Plan strategy rather than as an afterthought.   Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in worker morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in absenteeism or medical care claims.

Report both your Corporate Health Promotion Plan successes in building a healthy worksite environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides workers time for walking during the workday), and Corporate Health Promotion Plan successes in getting employees to take charge of their health (a rise in the number of workers who contacted the stop-smoking program, or a rise in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).