Health Handouts : Worksite Health Promotion Programs: Creating a Supportive Environment

How does it feel to walk into your workplace? Do people look content? Is the place illuminated and cheerful? Do you feel welcome, wanted and energized? Or do you feel a gloom come over you, and count the hours until you can leave?
The influence of the workplace environment on the health & wellness of staff members is huge. First there is the physical look, feel, smell, and sounds of the place. Then you’re affected by the policies, like whether others are allowed to smoke around you. As time passes, more subtle factors start to affect you. Do your attempts to adopt a healthier lifestyle get recognized at work, or are they sabotaged? Are your managers inspiring you by being positive role models? Do you get regular opportunities to learn healthier behaviors?
In a supportive environment, employees feel that the company they work for supports them with encouragement, opportunity, and rewards for healthy lifestyles. And the spirit that results is highly contagious. Staff Members who feel cared are naturally more loyal and productive.
The following ideas will help you change your workplace environment into one that actually supports the wellness of your employees and employer.

Employee Health Promotion Program Ideas for Creating Supportive Environments

Wellness Friendly Facilities

When you enter a worksite, do you feel comfortable? Could you be happy working there? Is there enough light and clean air? Are there pleasant work areas, places to eat decent food, take a walk before lunch? Close your eyes. How does it smell? Sound? Do the staff members have enough space?
• Vending machines with healthy food choices like low-fat milk, fruits, sugar-free and caffeine-free beverages and low-calorie snacks
• Workout area, walking paths, playing fields, basketball hoop, or other exercise opportunities onsite or nearby
• Cafeteria offers healthy foods including a salad bar with low-fat dressing
• Natural light is used whenever possible; all lighting is appropriate and adequate
• Heating and ventilation is adjustable, comfortable and healthful
• No cigarette machines, ashtrays, or smoking areas onsite
• Noise levels are safe and conducive to concentration
• Work station furniture conforms to ergometric standards
• Safety risks have been eliminated
• Lockers and showers are available for staff members who work out before work or while on breaks
• Stairs are clean and well lit, convenient and pleasant to use
Familiarity can make it tough to evaluate a worksite. People get used to stressful conditions and forget that conditions ever bothered them. It might be useful to ask someone who is unfamiliar with your workplace to walk through with you. Professional consultants can also prove helpful.

Proactive Wellness Policies

One clear way to impact behavior is through policies and procedures. If nurses aren’t allowed to work more than twelve hours consecutively, there will be fewer medication errors. If parents are allowed flextime to manage their children’s needs, they’ll be less stressed. If staff members are able to apply unused sick days to planned vacation time, they’ll save them up instead of calling in sick to utilize them all.

Supportive corporate policies may include:

• Seatbelt use necessitated in employer vehicles
• Drug and alcohol policies are relevant to the industry
• Emergency procedures are developed, known, and practiced
• Flexible work schedules allow workers to exercise, attend children’s school conferences, etc.
• Tobacco-free policy is enforced
• Excessive overtime is discouraged
• Membership at fitness facility is partially reimbursed
• Shift workers are scheduled to allow adequate rest
• Health Care Costs coverage rewards good health
• Rates of Absenteeism policy rewards workers who don’t use sick days
• Employee Assistance Program available to help employees with chemical dependencies, depression, family issues
• Meaningful consequences are used for unsafe, unhealthy, prohibited behavior.  Your organization may have a policy concerning alcohol use during work hours, but if everyone looks the other way when someone comes back from lunch reeking of beer, the culture is one that permits drinking at lunchtime-and one in which written policies have the potential to be safely ignored. Prohibited behaviors must be confronted promptly. Otherwise your policies become mere lip service rather than springboards to health.

Consistent Recognition And Rewards For Success

Attention, praise, and rewards are provided for wellness achievements.
You are able to show you value the Employee Wellness Programs by celebrating your programs and those who’ve made lifestyle improvements in organization newsletters, on bulletin boards, and at annual banquets, meetings, and celebrations. Incentives are a direct way to demonstrate appreciation, too.
Wellness mentors are sought and applauded, too. Workers who support others’ efforts to improve their health are noticed and appreciated. Peer modeling and mentoring classes have the potential to encourage those who enjoy helping others to step forward into a new role.

Managers Model And Support Healthier Behavior

Nothing could say “We advocate you to exercise often” better than a manager going on a bike ride during the lunch hour–or your supervisor sitting next to you in a weight management class. Wellness activities encourage relaxed interaction between people from different departments and at different echelons in the chain of command. That promotes relaxed communication and a feeling of solidarity that is pure gold.
Managers can also provide support for employees who are working on working on their health. It doesn’t take anything fancy-just a “great job” or “nice to see you at the fitness center” has the potential to put a glow on the cheeks of most of us.
Managers can also help by allowing employees the flexibility to go to wellness programs.

Ongoing Company Health Promotion Programs

It’s valuable to give staff members the sense that the wellness program is a permanent and valuable part of the business, not a business fad. That can start as soon as a new employee is hired.
New employees are oriented to the wellness program as one of the employee benefits. Information about the program must be presented by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable person who invites the new employee to participate.
The workers are familiar with the ongoing wellness programs.
The wellness programs and wellness coordinator are well known in the company. Opportunities to take part are abundant and it’s easy to sign up.
A wide variety of awareness classes are available. There are subject matters of interest for everyone.