Posts Tagged ‘small business wellness’
Promoting Physical Activity with a Bicycle Freindly Workplace
Bicycle Friendly Workplace
Promote a healthy small business environment and/or policy to encourage health and wellness providing bicycle racks in safe, convenient, and accessible
locations.
The benefits of providing a bicycle-friendly workplace includes:
- Bicycling can be a safe, healthy behavior.
- Placing bicycle racks in prominent locations may encourage people to ride to your location.
- Bicycle parking is inexpensive to provide compared to automobile parking.
- Studies have proven that people who exercise in the morning are more alert when they get to work.
Your Small Biz Action Steps
- Contact your facilities manager and/or city government to find out if a specific type of bicycle rackis required or if there are specific locations that bicycle racks must be installed on your property.
- If there is no standard rack, look for the inverted-U rack. This type of rack offers the best of short-term cycle parking and is widely regarded as the recommended standard.
- Determine a location that is convenient to access on a bicycle. Ideal locations are visible, well lit, and close to the building entrance. Make sure that curb ramps are in place so the bicyclist can ride directly to the rack. Keep in mind that bicyclists will park as close as they can to their destination. If your building has multiple entrances, make sure you install bike racks in multiple locations.
- To encourage bicycling, ask your local police department about bicycle registration. Many cities offer to engrave a number on bicycles so that if they are ever stolen, they can be traced back to the owner. You could host a bicycling event at your worksite and have the police come to register bicycles.
- To encourage bicycle commuting, your worksite should have showers, locker room, and storage for bicycles.
- Advertise the location of all bike racks to employees.
- Offer bicycle safety training on-site. Talk to departments of transportation, local bicycle vendors or police officers about making a presentation about rules of the road and bicycle safety tips.
- Give free or low-cost helmets and/or retro reflective gear to bicycle commuters.
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 Physical Activity through Onsite Fitness Classes
Exercise and Fitness Classes
Promote physical activity at your small business by offering on-site fitness programs, such as group classes or personal training.
The benefits of an on-site fitness program includes:
- Increased employee satisfaction and health
- Informal building of company networks
- Increased employee engagement and energy
- Building of positive company culture
- Potential reduction in overall healthcare costs
- Potential reduction in employee absences
On-site fitness programs can include:
- Having a group fitness classes led by an instructor
- Having group fitness classes following a fitness video
- Providing a dedicated room with fitness basics such as stretching mats, exercise balls, small hand weights, exercise videos, a TV, VCR or DVD player, etc.
- Walking club
Your Small Biz Action Steps
- Survey employees and find out what type of classes they want.
- Find an appropriate existing space such as a conference or meeting room.
- Partner with a local health club for fitness class ideas and for qualified instructors. See Appendix C for more detailed information on instructor credentials.
- Purchase TV, VCR or DVD player, and fitness videos.
- Makes sure you know the potential liability issues might be. Contact your employer‘s legal department regarding participant waivers, necessary insurance, and any other liability concerns.
- If available, provide shower facilities for employees who want to bicycle/run to work or exercise over the lunch hour.
- Provide bike racks or other bike storage facilities.
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.
Promote Healthy Eating with Wellness Incentives
Healthy Eating Incentives
Promote healthy eating and nutrition at your small business by providing incentives for participation in nutrition or weight management programs.
Most wellness programs are designed to change a health behavior such as increasing consumption of fruits and vegetables or losing weight. Health behavior is difficult to change, and therefore, wellness program coordinators must recognize that people often need external motivators and reasons to change. Incentives generate interest in the wellness program, offer rewards for changed behavior, and promote the company‘s belief in and commitment to wellness.
Incentives are useful and effective because of their direct impact on the universal human need for personal recognition and reward. An incentive may be defined as an anticipated positive or desirable reward that influences individual or group performance.
By reinforcing behaviors and rewarding results, successful program outcomes can be achieved. Among other things, incentives can be expected to: 1) increase program participation and completion rates, 2) provide a purpose for participants to make health behavior changes,
and 3) improve long-term adherence to a behavior.
Small Biz Action Steps
In order for an incentive to be effective, the participant needs to find it desirable and worth the effort. Finding out what incentives motivate your participants can be accomplished in many ways including preference surveys, focus groups, structured interviews, pilot testing different incentives with small groups, or just randomly asking key people what they think.
Experts recommend that the incentives be kept small while achieving program goals. Small but effective incentives are always more cost-effective. Smaller external incentives are more likely to help individuals internalize their new behaviors and maintain them over the long term without ongoing external rewards. The bottom line is that participation rates will increase if an incentive is offered.
Types of Incentives can be Categorized as Follows:
- Achievement awards. Verbal praise and a pat on the back are motivational to some, but a token of recognition of achievement may offer more. A colorful certificate to congratulate an employee for achieving a health-related goal is one example.
- Public recognition. Most people love to see their names in print. Publish the names of wellness program participants in your employee newsletter. This will honor the employees who have attempted to make positive lifestyle changes and can motivate others to do the same.
- Merchandise. Award a t-shirt, canvas bag, gift certificate/gift card, or an AM/FM radio to participants who sign up and/or complete a program. Your company logo may be imprinted on these items as well.
- Monetary rewards. Offer an employee $10 for completing a wellness program. Discount health insurance premiums for participants. Reimburse employees for attending a health-related educational training seminar. Food. Offer beverages and healthy snacks to employees who participate in on-site wellness programs. Use gift certificates to a local restaurant or grocery stores as door prizes. Entertainment. Hold a drawing for movie tickets, sporting events tickets, or health food store gift certificates for participants of wellness programs.
- Time off. Allow employees to take an extended lunch break or a half-day of leave for completing a long-term, company-sponsored wellness program.
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 Physical Activity through Workday Workouts
Workday Workouts
Promote physical activity at your small business by Offer flexible work hours to allow for physical activity during the day.
Your corporate physical activity strategy needs to reflect and compliment your corporate plan, matching your goals, objectives, needs, and resources. Employees who do physical activity on a regular basis make up a more fit and healthy workforce. The benefit is having a workforce that is more efficient and loses fewer days from illness and stress. Individuals improve their self-esteem, increase their personal satisfaction, have less psychological stress, can relax more easily, and show greater mental alertness.
Having flexible work hours allows employees to participate in specific physical activities before work, during the lunch hour, or even during the work day.
Your Small Biz Action Steps
- Assist management in developing a corporate policy statement supporting flexible work hours and distribute it to all managers and staff.
- Define supervisory responsibilities in the policy for approving work hour flexibility for physical activity while maintaining staff coverage and workflow.
- Offer flexible working hours allowing people to arrive at work a little later or leave a little earlier to help them add physical activity to their day.
- Provide and maintain male and female locker rooms that will support employees in midday physical activity. Locker rooms could include showers, hair dryers, towels, etc.
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.
Promote Healthy Eating & Nutrition by Making Water Available
Water Availibility
Promote healthy eating and nutrition at your small business by making water available throughout the day. Drinking water is essential for keeping your body functioning normally and preventing dehydration. Water, one of the most important and often overlooked nutrients, plays many roles in body processes. Water regulates body temperature, transports nutrients to cells, carries waste products away, helps cushion joints, protects organs and tissues, and helps in weight loss efforts.
Dehydration, the loss of body water, can have a detrimental effect. Dehydration can begin as thirst, but can quickly progress to effects such as fatigue, headache, dizziness, weakness, and delirium, and in the worst case, even death. In Colorado‘s dry climate, it is always important to drink water regularly. It‘s even more important when being physically active.
Water is a great alternative to soda and high-calorie beverages that offer little nutritional value. Many vending machines in the workplace are fully stocked with soda and sugar-filled beverages. Providing water at company functions and making it more available and visible to employees may help them choose water more often.
Small Biz Action Steps
- Educate employees about the importance of water and hydration through the company newsletter, emails, and posters/table tents in the cafeteria or around the building.
- Incorporate the message of drinking more water into existing health and fitness programs offered in the worksite. Encourage employees to set goals to drink more water along with other health and fitness goals.
- Make water available through water fountains and water coolers in break rooms, hallways, and lobbies. If budgetary constraints do not allow for purchase of water, initiate a program to get employees to contribute a small monthly donation that would fund bottled drinking water.
- Serve bottled water or water from pitchers at staff meetings as an alternative to coffee and soda. Try adding lemons and/or limes; toss in some fresh mint leaves; or mix in a bit of orange juice to add variety.
- Make water available in vending machines. Discuss with the vending representative the potential for adding water to the beverage inventory.
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 Physical Activity through Corporate Fitness Memberships
Corporate Fitness Memberships
Promote physical activity at your small business by exploring discounted memberships at local health clubs, recreation centers, or YMCAs.
Discounted memberships encourage employees to start regular physical fitness programs, allowing them to save money. By participating, they can build outside relationships with co-workers, relieve stress, and get rewarded for maintaining a good level of physical fitness. Discounted memberships are also a good alternative to creating an on-site fitness facility.
Your Small Biz Action Steps
- Contact individual health clubs (commercial fitness centers, fee-based, nonprofit agency fitness centers, and hospital-affiliated fitness/wellness centers) to inquire about corporate rate packages.
- Evaluate which clubs participate in company discounts and offer the best programs and amenities.
- Try to find a program that extends the discount to family members.
- Provide the human resources department with all of the information.
- Create a menu of fitness centers for employees to use as a resource.
- Promote the program/discount to employees.
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 Physical Activity through Stair Well Activities
Taking the Stairs
Promote physical activity at your small business by post motivational signs at elevators and escalators to encourage stair usage.
Taking the stairs regularly is a promising intervention for increasing physical activity. Deciding between using the stairs and using an elevator or escalator is a lifestyle choice that often occurs daily. Using the stairs requires little or no additional time and no additional cost because the building codes require stairs.
Your Small Biz Action Steps
Posting motivational signs at points-of-decision around a building is important in encouraging people to use the stairs. However, messages and artwork that are motivating to one audience may be a turn off to another, which is why it is important to test them with members of your audience first. Whether the messages are inspirational, factual, health-related, or humorous, find out what motivates your audience and tailor your messages and artwork accordingly.
- Put the signs next to the elevator buttons at eye-level or in a place where elevator and escalator users will easily see them as they approach.
- Vary the messages from time to time to keep people reading and interested.
- Post the first sign at all elevator sites for a week or two. Periodically post new signs.
- Consider doing a survey before posting the signs to find out how often people use the stairs.
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.
Promote Healthy Eating at Company Events
Healthy Meetings & Events
Promote healthy eating options at your small business by offering healthful food choices at company meetings and functions, employees have increased opportunities for making healthy food choices at work that, in turn, benefit their health. Also, offering healthy food choices and alternatives at company functions shows employees that their employer cares about their health and well-being.
Small Biz Action Steps
Here is a list of suggestions for healthful meals and snacks:
Breakfast meetings
- Fruit and/or 100 percent fruit juices
- Whole grain cereal and low-fat dairy or soy milk
- Low-fat yogurt
- Bagels and reduced-fat cream cheese
- English muffins
Lunch meetings
- Baked chicken with vegetables and brown rice
- Pasta with vegetables
- Box lunches: sandwiches with fruit
- Veggie pizza
- Vegetable soups
- Green salads
- Bean and veggie burritos
- Lean meats
Afternoon or mid-morning meetings
- Fruit: apples, oranges, grapes, raisins, 100 percent juice
- Sliced vegetables with low-fat dip
- Low-fat milk or yogurt
- Pretzels
- Nuts, trail mixes
- Baked tortilla chips with salsa
- Reduced-fat crackers, graham crackers, animal crackers
- Air-popped popcorn
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.
Curbing Obesity Epidemic Key to Health Care Reform
A diverse alliance of payer, provider and consumer organizations, girded by two former U.S. Surgeons General, on Wednesday urged policymakers to address the nation’s obesity epidemic as part of federal health care reform legislation.
“At this critical juncture where we’re dealing with health-care transformation, we want to make sure that the federal government and our elected leaders recognize the importance of including approaches to obesity that are evidence-based and proven within their legislative strategy,” former Surgeon General Dr. Richard Carmona told reporters during a media briefing.
Carmona serves as the health and wellness chairperson of the Strategies to Overcome and Prevent (STOP) Obesity Alliance, whose steering committee includes the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity and Obesity, among other public and private organizations.
The alliance is funded by drug makers Sanofi-Aventis U.S. L.L.C. and Amylin Pharmaceuticals.
Former Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher, whose 2001 report on obesity recognized the problem as an “epidemic,” emphasized the need to invest in health promotion and disease prevention, particularly for the health of the nation’s youth.
“We are in essence addicting our children to sedentary lifestyles; we’re addicting them to high-salt, high-sweet, high-fat diets,” he said, “and then we pay for it later on when they come to us with cancer, heart disease, [and] diabetes.”
America’s weight problem is pervasive. Two-thirds of the population is now overweight and obese, according to the CDC, and as many as 72 million adults are considered obese. In fact, obesity rates have doubled for adults and tripled for children since 1980.
People often see obesity as a personal failure, explained Christine C. Ferguson, director of the alliance and a research professor at George Washington University School of Public Health and Health Services, in Washington, D.C. “The result is the problem has gotten worse and worse, and more and more expensive.”
Obesity accounts for 9.1 percent of annual health-care spending in the United States, or nearly $150 billion annually, according to a study in a recent issue of Health Affairs.
To help arrest the epidemic, the alliance urges policymakers to include four specific elements in health reform:
- Recognize proven clinical interventions. Studies demonstrate, for example, that shedding just 5 percent to 10 percent of body weight can lower the risk of heart disease and other chronic conditions.
- Enhance the use of preventive services. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends obesity screening for all adults, yet studies show height and weight data often is not recorded during an office visit.
- Foster community programs and polices that encourage and support healthy lifestyles. A community might design public spaces that accommodate walkers and bikers, for example, or sponsor a farmer’s market to make fresh produce available to local residents.
- Coordinate research efforts to improve the quality of care, show which interventions work in various settings and translate science into practice.
Morgan Downey, the alliance’s policy adviser, noted one positive aspect of health reform proposals from the House of Representatives and Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee: They eliminate the worry that overweight Americans might not be able to obtain health insurance coverage because of preexisting health conditions.
“Just the removal of that language really frees up individuals who are overweight or obese to have access to health insurance,” he said.
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.