Create a Mission Statement
 To keep the wellness program on track, create a mission statement to guide planning efforts. Keep the mission statement short and simple, reflecting the focus of the wellness program in one to two sentences. Be sure to communicate the mission statement with employees. By reading the wellness program mission statement, employees should be able to understand the purpose of the program, as well as how program goals will be attained and how achievement of those goals will be confirmed. Mission statements should align with corporate strategy—or better yet—wellness should be an integral part of the overall corporate strategic plan.
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Construct a Written Wellness Plan
With essential forms of data having been collected, the task is now to develop an operating plan for health and wellness within the organization. This operating plan will serve as a roadmap and will guide the company’s efforts and investments in workplace wellness.
READ  Carefully Crafting an Operating Plan (WELCOA)
It is now appropriate to begin choosing and implementing the appropriate health and productivity interventions. These interventions will most likely include tobacco cessation, physical activity, weight management, self-care, and stress management.
Tools
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CDC LEAN Works! - A Workplace Obesity Prevention Program: Free web-based resources that offers interactive tools and evidence-based resources to design effective worksite obesity prevention and control programs.
Physical Activity
CDC Steps to Wellness : A Guide to Implementing the 2008 Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans in the Workplace: Provides employers interested in establishing or expanding their wellness programs with easy and understandable steps on how to increase the physical activity of employees in the workplace.
Healthy Eating
CDC Garden Market: This toolkit provides information on how to establish a garden market in your organization.
CDC Under Pressure: Strategies for Sodium Reduction in Worksites: The Guide provides practical strategies for improving the food environment in worksites as creating a wellness team, establishing a comprehensive food policy, and incentivizing employee participation.
Breastfeeding
CDC Lactation Support Program: This toolkit provides an example of how to create a comprehensive lactation, or breastfeeding, support program for nursing mothers at the worksite.
Heart Disease and Stroke
CDC Reducing the Risk of Heart Disease and Stroke: A Six-Step Guide for Employers, and Evaluating Health Plan Benefits and Services to Promote Cardiovascular Health and Prevent Heart Disease and Stroke: The handout includes information about promising employer practices and effective interventions. It will also allow employers to estimate how much they can save on costs related to health care, absenteeism, and lost productivity by investing in these programs.
CDC Heart-Healthy and Stroke-Free Toolkit of Successful Business Strategies to Prevent Heart Disease and Stroke: The Toolkit provides information, materials, tools, and references. It also provides suggestions about which health benefits, services, and interventions can improve employee cardiovascular health, prevent heart disease and stroke, and reduce related costs.
CDC Under Pressure: Strategies for Sodium Reduction in Worksites: The Guide provides practical strategies for improving the food environment in worksites as creating a wellness team, establishing a comprehensive food policy, and incentivizing employee participation.
Tobacco
Safety and Injury
Free Cell Phone Policy Kit: A policy kit developed by the National Safety Council which helps employers to implement or strengthen a workplace cell phone ban. The kit contains resource materials for executives, guides for the implementation team and educational materials for employees.
Our Concern: Employer Traffic Safety Program: Motor vehicle crashes are the number one cause of unintentional workplace deaths in the United States. This website educates employers on the impact that vehicle crashes have on their business and ways to prevent them.
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Build a Wellness Budget
When establishing a new wellness program, it is common to begin with a limited budget that may increase with proven success. If possible, try to develop the budget based on the objectives and employees’ needs so that the program can incorporate the elements that will make it successful. The budget should include items like printing, materials, HRAs, health screenings, staff time, release time for employee participation, incentives, and evaluation costs. An accurate, comprehensive budget will allow the wellness committee to weigh program costs against program outcomes during evaluation.
Draft a Long-Range Plan
It may be overwhelming if there are several areas that the wellness committee and/or the leadership would like to address through the program. Creating a long range plan based on outcome objectives will allow for the achievement of small successes while moving towards a larger goal. For many organizations, a long range plan will include transitioning the wellness program from a participation-based program where employees are rewarded for participating in wellness program events and attempting behavior change to an outcomes-based program where employees are rewarded for achieving behavior change and reducing their health risks.
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