Archive for the ‘Small Biz Wellness 101’ Category
Promoting Physical Activity through Activity Breaks
Physical Activity & Breaks
Promote physical activity at your small business by supporting fitness activity breaks during the workday, such as stretching or getting up for a walk.
Taking small breaks and stretching or going for a walk around the office throughout the day can help reduce muscle tension caused when we are sitting for too long. When we don’t get up from our desk muscles fatigue faster, circulation decreases, we become uncomfortable, and tasks become more difficult. Stretching can help relieve discomfort due to repetitive movements, awkward postures, and excessive force.
In addition, getting up from our desks and taking a break can help prevent certain types of injuries caused from Injury occurs from repeated physical movements, doing damage to tendons, nerves, muscles, and other soft body tissues.
Your Small Biz Action Steps
- Stretch breaks can be self-initiated or formally led by an instructor.
- Employees can schedule their own breaks in Outlook software or by email calendar.
- Software is available that will automatically notify you when it‘s time for a break and will lead you through some exercises.
- Hang posters of stretching exercises on the walls for people without Internet access. Incentive programs can also be incorporated.
- Hire a fitness instructor or group exercise leader to provide instruction on stretching, strength exercises, walking, or relaxation techniques.
- Bring in a massage therapist to provide chair massages.
Get Started Today!
You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.
Promoting Health Education & Awareness through Health Fairs
Health Fairs
Promote social support interventions and/or health education activities in your small business by hosting a health fair. A small business health fair is an effective way to provide valuable health information and screening services to your numbers of employees in a convenient “one-stop shop” format.
Small Biz Action Steps
There are several ways to plan a health fair. Your company may choose to host your own health fair for employees, or you may choose to host an organized third-party health fair for your small business, such as a WelCo Health Solutions – Health Fair. With either option, planning follows some basic steps.
- Establishing a Health Fair Planning Committee is the first step to a successful event. This committee should include a cross section of employees interested in healthy living and willing to commit time to the planning process.
- Health fairs should complement small business workplace and provide services in a convenient manner for employees. No matter the size of the event, offering some services on-site encourages employees to examine their lifestyle and health. Simply increasing awareness of health issues may be the greatest benefit of the event.
Get Started Today!
You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.
Promoting Health Education & Awareness through HRA’s
Health Risk Appraisals
Promote social support interventions and/or health education activities in your small business by provide a confidential health risk appraisal.
A Health Risk Appraisal is a technique for determining the presence of disease and estimating the risk that someone with certain characteristics will develop disease within a given time span. The three components of a Health Risk Appraisal are: 1) questionnaire, 2) risk calculation, and 3) educational reports.
Understanding the health of your organization can be challenging. Our Health Risk Appraisal (HRA) makes it easy! Our HRA will evaluate the overall health of your population. The information gathered will allow for tailored onsite and online health promotion programs to improve your employee productivity and health.
Our HRA will help you uncover which health risks are most prevalent within your small biz and to take proactive steps towards addressing them. Questions on the HRA focus on modifiable lifestyle behaviors in areas such as exercise, nutrition, tobacco, safety and stress management. In addition, it integrates questions from the Framingham Heart Study (American Heart Association), the Centers for Disease Control, United States Preventive Studies Task Force (USPTSF), as well as Prochaska and Clemente’s Stages of Change.
HRA Features
- Personalized Wellness for each user – HRA is tightly integrated with screening results and profile information offering complete wellness programs focusing on prevention and Empowering Healthier Living.
- Aggregate reports - As an employer, setting benchmarks is important and easy to do in the mywelcoach.com wellness platform. At any time you may run reports to measure the overall health of your population, and measure progress in key areas over time.
- Cardiac Risk Score – Based on the world-renowned Framingham Heart Study, learn the risk of having a heart attack in the next 10 years.
- Diabetes Risk Score – Each employee will find out their risk of developing diabetes and be prompted to take “preventive action”
Small Biz Action Steps
- Offer health screenings as part of a health fair.
- Host periodic screening events as an alternative to full health fairs.
Get Started Today!
You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.
Promoting Health Education & Awareness through Preventive Screenings
Preventive Screenings
Promote social support interventions and/or health education activities in your small business by holding preventive wellness screenings for things like blood pressure, body composition, blood cholesterol, and diabetes.
Health screenings help identify risk of serious illness. Preventive wellness screenings provide measurements or evaluations of certain indicators of health that indicate a person’s degree of risk for specific diseases. Many preventable diseases and the indicators of health are interrelated. For example, an individual with excess body fat is also at risk for high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease.
Inconvenience and cost are barriers that often prevent people from getting routine health screenings. When offered at work, these screenings are very convenient and cost-effective. Early identification of risk can often prevent the development of more serious health issues. When serious risk is identified, early intervention will lead to better outcomes.
Small Biz Action Steps
- Offer health screenings as part of a health fair.
- Host periodic screening events as an alternative to full health fairs.
- Host a Health Fair or encourage employees to attend a Health Fair in their community.
- Offer different wellness screenings each month along with an educational program on that specific topic. This allows people to focus on different topics and reinforces wellness and prevention throughout the year. For example, during February, American Heart Month, offer cholesterol and blood pressure screenings.
- Many companies pay for part or all of the screenings for their employees. Other companies do not have this option, but can still offer convenient, lower-cost worksite screenings. Screening/wellness companies should be able to offer reasonable rates for their services on a cash (no insurance) basis.
Get Started Today!
You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.
Promoting Health Education & Awareness with Communications
Health & Wellness Communications
Promote social support interventions and/or health education activities in your small business by providing health education information through newsletters, publications, websites, email, libraries, and other company communications.
Providing health education information to employees is one way to encourage them to make positive lifestyle changes and responsible health care decisions.
Small Biz Action Steps
- Provide information in newsletters. Subscribe to pre-written health and wellness newsletters or create your own.
- Start a health education library of books, magazines, newsletters and/or videos.
- Include bookmarks or brochures in paycheck envelopes.
- Send weekly or monthly tips through email.
- Offer internet access stations for employees who do not have individual access.
Get Started Today!
You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help
Promoting Health Education & Awareness with Wellness Interventions
Wellness Intervention Programs
Promote social support interventions and/or health education activities in your small business by offering health and wellness intervention programs. Ongoing programs, such as weight management, smoking cessation and stress management classes provide the support and motivation employees need to facilitate lasting behavior change.
Wellness Action Plan
- Conduct an employee survey to determine interest in such a program and best day of the week and time of day to host it.
- Determine which program you want to offer. Research your options and take into consideration program reputation, class content, instructor credentials, cost, etc.
- Offer an on-site program before work, over the lunch hour, or after work.
- Consider subsidizing the program so that the employer and employee each pay half of the class registration.
- If budgeting is an issue, invite a registered dietitian or exercise physiologist to speak about nutrition and physical activity.
Get Started Today!
You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.
Promoting Health Education & Awareness with Presentations
Health Education & Awareness
Promote social support interventions and/or health education activities in your small business by offering regular health & wellness presentations on various topics.
Providing health and wellness information to your employees at your small business shows your concern for the well-being of your employees. The information they gain from health education seminars may empower employees to take better care of their health, start a habit, or become a better healthcare-consumer. This, in turn, can help your small business to positively focus on things such as health care costs, absenteeism, and productivity.
Small Biz Action Steps
- First, find out what concerns or interests your employees by conducting an employee wellness survey . This can help you determine what topics would be of most interest to your employees.
- Next, determine the best time of day for health education seminars. Consider offering it at multiple times. For traditional work schedules, the lunch hour is often a popular time. However for employees with shift work, you might want to offer it different times throughout each shift. In addition, you may want to videotape the presentation and make it available for those who were not able to attend.
- Select the length of the presentation. A lunch-time presentation most commonly last 30 minutes and up to one hour, but can vary according your environment.
- Once a topic has been selected, contact local organizations that can provide speakers on the topic. Specify the date (s) and time(s).
- Promote your presentations through promotional material, such as e-mail, flyers, and meeting announcements.
- Consider encouraging employees to pre-register if materials are needed.
- Offering incentives, such as small door prize often will increase participation.
- Final, have employees complete an evaluation or request that the presenter provide you with an evaluation that can be given out to attendees.
Get Started Today!
You CAN control healthcare costs for you and your employees with practical and affordable wellness tools and strategies that will ultimately help them create a lifetime of healthy habits. For more information on any our small business wellness programs or services, Contact Us today and find out we can help.
The Cornerstone of Our Employee Health Strategy – You
In case you haven’t noticed, the cost of health care continues to rise. Small businesses are seeing their profits consumed by higher insurance premiums and individual claims costs. Like many small
businesses, your organization has turned to worksite wellness to help you develop healthy behaviors and lower your risk of developing a chronic disease.
Having a healthier workforce will lower direct costs like insurance premiums and worker’s compensation claims. It will also positively impact many indirect costs such as absenteeism and low
worker productivity. What does that have to do with you? That ultimately means more money in YOUR pocket!
Our health and wellness programs are your key to optimizing your fitness, dietary, and wellness goals. You now have the power to proactively regain control and transform your life. Whether you are a first time user or already a member, you’ll have access to some of the most extensive array of interactive tools and resources.
Below are some of the programs that are automatically included in your organization’s wellness program.
- EXERCISE & NUTRITION EDUCATION
- ON-LINE WELLNESS PROGRAMS
- WELLNESS COACHING
- WEIGHT MANAGEMENT
- INDIVIDUAL & GROUP FITNESS
- WELLNESS SEMINARS & WORKSHOPS
- SMOKING CESSATION PROGRAMS
- HEALTH SCREENINGS
- STRESS REDUCTION