It takes more than just educational seminars and workshops to bring about desired and ongoing changes in your employees’ health behaviour toward health.
One of the most critical elements in helping your staff adopt healthier habits is a supporting health and wellness culture and environment.
Creating a culture of wellness is a positive step towards morale improvement, productivity enhancement, and illness-related cost reduction.
However, there is no reason to invest time and effort toward the creation of such a culture if your senior management team does not take personal wellness seriously.
Corporate Health Culture
If senior leaders in your organisation are not interested, it’s very unlikely that they will show their long-term support for a culture of wellness.
One recent study of corporate wellness culture and senior managers revealed that the importance of economic factors in the management choices of workplace health programs is consistently overestimated.
We always assume that our management team is unwilling and sceptical about corporate health programs, and that they only care about the bottom line. Of course there is often truth in that view; however the fact is that most managers are supportive and aware that wellness is important and valuable for their staff.
But they are simply not experts in the field and need to understand it better to be able to make a financial decision. So the best way to secure your management teams’ support is to tailor your approach to the attitudes of your leaders, and work on their own individual ‘stages of change’ toward a more supportive position about corporate health.
Once you’ve got the buy-in from your leaders, it’s time to assess your organisation’s overall culture by going through a Corporate Health Culture Inventory, also called Corporate Health Check List. It will help you reinforce the areas where you are already doing well and identify existing areas where there is opportunity for improvement.
The inventory or checklist should cover all the aspects of your employee’s health and wellbeing listed below:
1. Physical Activity
2. Tobacco Use
3. Disease Management
4. Weight Management & Nutrition
5. Drugs and Alcohol
6. Stress Management
7. Ergonomics
8. Environment
9. Employees’ Benefits & Rewards
For more information on Corporate Health Culture, and Corporate Health Programs contact Healthworks on 1300 90 10 90 (International: IDD 61-2-9954-1888) or contact us.
