How to Bring a Corporate Wellness Program into Your Company

Healthier employees are happier, more efficient, hardworking, and helpful to others. Conversely, unhealthy ones are unhappy, sluggish, less productive, and overtired. As you may already know, being healthy involves not only eating well but integrating an exercise and fitness program into your daily life. Helping your staff stay healthy by setting up a corporate wellness program is one way you can show how much you value your employees. However, will investing in a corporate wellness program really benefit your company? Absolutely, and here’s how!

Why it’s Worth Investing in a Corporate Wellness Program in Kansas City

Leads to High ROI

The effectiveness of a corporate wellness program reflects in the company’s Return on Investment (ROI). According to research conducted by Corporate Wellness Magazine, investing $1 in employee wellness programs yields about $6 in savings through higher productivity, reduced overall health costs, reduced sick days, and possibly lower insurance premiums.

Boosts Productivity and Company Success

Wellness-related programs make workers productive and more successful. In 2014, Spa Finder Wellness carried out a study of workers in North America and reported that the top obstacles to work productivity are overall fatigue (55%) and job stress (52%). This was the average percentage for employees in companies with and without a corporate wellness program. However, workers from companies without wellness programs would cite job stress (60%) and fatigue (61%) as their productivity killers.

Thus, stress and fatigue can hamper productivity and one of the greatest ways to remove these obstacles is to embrace a corporate wellness program in Kansas City which can offer personalized fitness training, small group training, fitness challenges, nutrition coaching, and other useful wellness programs that will make for a healthier, productive, motivated, and happier worker.

5 Simple Steps on How to Institute a Corporate Wellness Program in Your Company

So, how do you introduce a corporate wellness program in Kansas City that’s smart, scalable, efficient, and goal-oriented?

1. Determine the needs of both the employees and employer

It’s essential that you figure out employees’ needs and how those needs fit with the employer’s goals. To establish this, you need to assess both sides. The assessment should seek to understand their mindset and challenges. The easiest way to assess this is through a survey. You can use a health risk assessment (your insurance carrier might offer it) and follow it up with biometric screens to determine the problem areas.

2. Analyze the Assessed Data and Devise a Plan

Once you’ve reviewed the survey results, you can see which elements will best motivate your employees. Will fitness classes, individual health assessments, or wellness workshops motivate them, or a combination of these? You may need to combine physical activity with wellness education to make the wellness program inclusive and beneficial to all employees.

3. Develop a Communication Strategy

Reinforcement is paramount if you’re planning to introduce a corporate wellness program in your company. You should create a clear communication plan that defines the methods and timings for relaying the information to employees. The plan should also include the program’s framework. Your strategy should include the following:

• Dedicate a day or even several days to familiarize employees with the new wellness program.
• Nominate a company ‘wellness leader’ who employees can seek out if they need more information.
• Have a plan to update all future employees about the program during onboarding.

4. Introduce Incentives

Research shows that rewarding employees to get healthy and achieve results may trigger the change needed to jump-start a program. It also augments a shift in an organization’s culture. However, since the desired behavior changes are challenging, new and hard to sustain, you should come up with year-long rewards to encourage long-term engagement.

5. Let Your Legal Counsel Review the Program

Be sure that everything in your new corporate wellness program in Kansas City doesn’t violate any laws by having your company attorney review it. As Gwen Moran, a guest author at Entrepreneur advises, you’ll need some legal guidance if your program incentives contain exercise programs that may exclude the participation of people with disabilities. There is also need to keep employee health data private, so you may need to use a third party such as your insurance provider to gather such information.

It takes planning and strategy to introduce a robust program for corporate wellness, but starting is easier than you may think and will pay off in the long run. Looking for more information on starting a corporate wellness program in Kansas City? Contact us today. AYC Health & Fitness has over 30 years’ experience in corporate wellness in Kansas City and can help you create the right program for your company.