Employee Wellness
Define your Wellness strategy for 2008
07-JAN-08
It has been said time and time again – a Corporate Wellness strategy cannot be implemented on a bits and pieces basis. Lets be honest, “Strategy” would be a rather grandiose description if you are going to randomly pick the occasional workshop and maybe throw in your flu inoculations over the year.

Your role in Human Resources is to lay out a strategy with measurable goals over the year to achieve effectively develop and manage your workforce. Key questions you need to assess:

1. Is the Wellness campaign applicable to your industry? (What is the Safety and Health Legislation?)
2. How will it be implemented with minimal disruption to your workforce?
3. How will follow-up be managed? It is all good and well implementing a specific campaign (EG. HIV / Addiction) – is your HR team equipped to provide counseling and follow-up support? If your in-house team is not equipped to assist their staff, you are likely to create additional pressures on your own team, creating a negative attitude toward the Wellness initiative
4. What are we as a company actually trying to get out of this Wellness program?

Importance of a plan:

An HR team needs to plan their Wellness strategy over the year and work with their service provider to layout their goals for the year. Typically this will look something like this:

A) Consultation to develop measurable goals for first quarter and Industry Specific requirements – e.g. the Call Centre and recruitment processes
B) Identification of time / season specific events – e.g. Flu Management ahead of winter and Financial Wellness ahead of the Festive season
C) Follow-up and support procedures

By making the upfront investment of defining your Wellness goals you achieve a couple of important aspects:

- Defining of responsibility – how is the team going to deal with and manage follow-up?
- What is your business looking to get out of the campaign?
- Long term education of staff – why are they participating and why is the company making the investment?

Conclusion:

Strategy is the name of the game when it comes to managing Corporate Wellness. As an HR Manager If you don’t have a plan – you’re not doing anything for your own peace of mind… and as we know – peace of mind is the starting point to Wellness.

About the author:

Marc Ashton runs Rival Industrial (www.rival.co.za) www.rival.co.za, a Gauteng based Corporate Wellness, Industrial Research, Publishing and Design Company. The company supplies a variety of solutions largely to the Manufacturing and Call Centre environments.

Contact Details:

Tel: +27 11 673-4421
E-mail: paula@rival.co.za
Web: www.rival.co.za