The worksite environment is a effective, but frequently overlooked, element in managing staff member health. Here we will identify some of the best-practices in establishing a Corporate Health Promotion Plan that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows staff members to take charge of their own health. For example, a Corporate Health Promotion Plan that includes a smoke-free worksite policy improves the likelihood that staff members will try to quit tobacco use and will quit smoking successfully. Similarly, a Corporate Health Promotion Plan that includes discounting healthy foods in your cafeteria and vending machines helps raise staff members’ consumption of healthy foods which supports your investment in disease management programs for staff members with diabetes, heart disease or hypertension. The following will guide you through the ten key steps in establishing a Corporate Health Promotion Plan and worksite environment that encourages staff member health.
In an era of increasing health care costs and fervent competition, corporations have a vested interest in the health of their staff members. Research studies have found that, on average, staff members with healthy behaviors (such as not smoking or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower health care expenses, are absent from work less frequently, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than staff members with unhealthy behaviors.
Corporate Health Promotion Program: Gaining Upper Management Support
Corporate Health Promotion Plan support from the highest level of upper management is essential to your success in establishing a culture of health within your worksite. Look for Corporate Health Promotion Plan support from a leader who is respected by and can influence other leaders. (It’s not necessary that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Corporate Health Promotion 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 company needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your company is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Corporate Health Promotion Program. There are a number of ways to find an individual with the necessary skills to guide and support your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Program.
Establishing facilities and Corporate Health Promotion Plan policies, such as those allowing staff members to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be expensive, but it does require adequate and sustained financing. 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 company.
Worker Involvement in the Corporate Health Promotion Plan
Developing a representative group of workers to advise your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Plan ensures that improvements in worksite facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of workers. In addition, these staff members can support as the front-line Corporate Health Promotion Plan supporters of policies and practices with their peers.
Create a Corporate Health Promotion Plan “Brand” and Vision
A Corporate Health Promotion Plan vision and a brand are effective first steps in bringing 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 (staff members and leaders alike) the reasons for establishing a Corporate Health Promotion Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between staff member health and your company’s ability to achieve its overall mission.
Branding your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Plan sends a message to staff members that the company’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 staff members. Then use that brand on all Corporate Health Promotion Plan communications with staff members about the policies, facilities and programs your company offers to promote healthy behaviors.
Evaluate Your Current Corporate Health Promotion Plan Situation
Exactly how your company establishes a Corporate Health Promotion Plan that encourages healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your company and employee population.
Evaluate 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 staff members, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data. Note: Information on workers’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.
Set Corporate Health Promotion Plan Goals and Priorities
Use what you’ve learned about the health of the employees and about your current worksite environment to determine your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Plan priorities. From those Corporate Health Promotion Plan priorities, define clear and measurable Corporate Health Promotion Plan goals for improving the health of the employees and your company’s culture. Well written goals will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.
Select Corporate Health Promotion Plan Strategies
Focus your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Plan resources (time, energy and money) on procedures that are most likely to produce results: an increase in healthy eating, an increase 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 procedures 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 company. Work plans maintain your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to start a Corporate Health Promotion Plan stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.
Educate and Communicate About the Corporate Health Promotion Plan
Ensure staff members 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 staff members 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 start systems for collecting information — before you begin a Corporate Health Promotion Plan strategy rather than as an afterthought. Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in staff member morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in rates of absenteeism or health 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 staff members time for walking during the workday), and Corporate Health Promotion Plan successes in getting workers to take charge of their health (an increase in the number of staff members who contacted the stop-smoking program, or an increase in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).
