Build a wellness program

A wellness program aims to help employees and their family members be their best through positive behavior changes. These changes focus on enhancing well-being, reducing health and injury risks, and improving health consumer skills. Effective wellness programs can help employees feel more valued at work, reduce employee turnover, and manage health care costs. 

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How can I build my wellness program?

To build and grow your wellness program, use our Worksite Wellness Roadmap. We created this online tool based on researched best practices to help you plan and target key areas for success.

For a one-page summary of the roadmap, see the Worksite Wellness Roadmap Visual.

Need help with the roadmap?

New to wellness?

Email us to help you get started, engage your leaders, or explain the business case of why wellness is a win-win for organizations and their staff.

Why use the roadmap?

We want to recognize and reward your hard work and success! Submitting the roadmap each year is your organization's application for our annual Zo8 Award.

Your organization can earn the Zo8 Award without completing every task we outline in the roadmap because we recognize and respect that all of you face your own unique challenges and are at different levels of program maturity. Go to tracking success for more details about the Zo8 Award.

Along with the chance to earn the Zo8 award, here are three more reasons why your organization should use the roadmap:

  1. Easy-to-use tool helps build, grow, and sustain a wellness program.
  2. Helps both new and mature wellness programs.
  3. Based on best practices from wellness leaders.

Resources to complete the roadmap

To help you complete the roadmap, use the resources below within each step.

Step 1: Get leadership support

What is leadership support?

Leadership support can come in many different forms including a single sponsor or an executive leadership team. Leadership support can be a simple letter of support or something more complex like incorporating wellness into your new employee orientation.

Why get leadership support?

Leaders play a key role in the success of a wellness program. When leaders are on board and promote the wellness program, it can increase visibility and engagement. By involving leadership early on, you become aligned on the goals of the program and learn about their expectations. For more information, see Supportive Leaders Drive Organizational Improvements and Employee Health and Well-Being (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention).

How to get leadership support

Use the resources below to help you complete the tasks to get leadership support. For more details on how to get leadership support, see Strategies for Enhancing Management Support for Wellness (adopted from the Chapman Institute) and How to Get Leadership Support for Employee Wellness (Wellsteps).

Wellness training for managers and supervisors module

Task 1.1: Work with leadership to define the wellness vision for your organization

Task 1.2: Ask what types of resources and budget leadership will provide

Task 1.3: Ask which leaders will help promote or support the program

Step 2: Form a team

What is a successful team?

A successful team enjoys working together and for one another to achieve shared goals. Form a diverse team if possible. Look for a mix of skills, experience, age, cultures, perspectives, and more. A diverse team offers unique skills and expertise. See Build A High-Performing Team in 30 Minutes (Forbes).

Why form a team?

A team makes everything easier. A team can reach more people, accomplish more tasks, and reach sustained success by sharing the load. When your team grows together, you are better prepared to handle changes. See Nine Steps to Building Team Cohesion (Forbes).

How do I form a successful team?

Use the resources below to help you complete the tasks to form a successful team to grow your worksite wellness program. For more details, see Form Your Wellness Team.

Task 2.1: Form a diverse team with staff from different units, backgrounds, and work roles

Task 2.2: Define roles and create a team structure and workflow

Step 3: Collect information

What information should we collect?

You can collect information in a variety of ways, but we want you to focus on a few key pieces to help shape your program. Now that you found out your leadership needs, reach out to your staff and find out what they want.

Why collect information?

Knowing where you are at makes it easier to figure out where to go. Ask your audience what they want in a wellness program. Using this collaborative approach gives them a voice in shaping the program, making it more likely for them to join and inspire others. Collecting information will give you the details you need to create a sound wellness plan. For more details on why you should collect information, see Collecting Data to Drive Health Efforts (WELCOA).

How to collect information

Use the resources below to help you collect information to create a plan for your program. For more details on how to collect information, see Building a Sound Data Collection Plan (Six Sigma).

Task 3.1: Send a wellness interest survey to your staff

Task 3.2: Give staff multiple ways to share feedback

  • Make it easy for your staff to share input. Offer options that make sense for your organization (email, phone, physical drop box, QR code, etc.), but try to use the ones that make it easy for you to track and organize the feedback.

Task 3.3: Request SmartHealth Data

Data access limitation

Organizations with less than 21 registered employees cannot get access to the data for privacy reasons.

Task 3.4: Review your SmartHealth data

Step 4: Make a plan

What is a wellness plan?

Your wellness plan mirrors a good project management plan. Similar to all project plans, you can use a shorter, simpler template if you are just starting or a more robust plan if you have a mature program. Use terms that fit your organization such as mission, goals, or objectives.

Why use a wellness plan?

A good plan makes it easier for everyone to work together. Following the principle of starting slow to move fast, the extra work up front will help you work faster and smarter down the line. The plan will help keep your team on track, know what to do and when, and have a formal way to share your success at the end of the year. To help assess whether your workplace environment supports good health practices, see Checklist to Change (WellSteps).

How do I create a wellness plan?

Use the resources below to help you complete the tasks to create your plan. For ideas on how to get started, see Wellness plan tips.

Task 4.1: Analyze your wellness interest survey results

Task 4.2: Find ways to combine leadership's vision with your interest survey results

Task 4.3: Plan how and when to communicate with your staff

Task 4.4: Plan how and when to integrate SmartHealth

Task 4.5: Plan how and when leadership can help promote

Task 4.6: Create a wellness plan using all of the information you gathered since step 1

Wellness plan examples

Task 4.7: Get leadership to review, approve, and sign the wellness plan

Step 5: Promote activities

What are wellness activities?

Wellness activities are the things you do and promote at the worksite to engage staff in healthy lifestyle activities. Focus on giving them activities they want to create excitement and maximize participation. Build activities based on the eight dimensions of wellness (emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, occupational, physical, social, and spiritual).

Why promote activities?

You need to engage your staff for them to participate. Without staff participation, your program cannot succeed. Think about staff interests, goals, and needs to maximize participation. You can raise wellness awareness, but these activities give staff the opportunity to practice them. By giving them the activities they want, you can build morale, increase visibility, and generate excitement. For tips on how to engage employees, see How to Maximize Employee Wellness Participation (WellSteps) and Well-Being Strategies for Employee Engagement and Retention (WebMD).

How do I promote activities?

Use the resources below to help you promote activities. 

Task 5.1: Use multiple communication channels

Task 5.2: Promote SmartHealth news and activities

Task 5.3: Integrate and promote a SmartHealth activity

Task 5.4: Get leadership to promote or visibly support at least one activity

Tip: Highlight the value of worksite wellness by asking your leadership to send the message. Doing this completes tasks 1.3 and 5.4.

Step 6: Create policies

What are wellness policies?

Wellness policies help shape how your staff can engage in your wellness program. These policies define the experience, answering the what, when, and how for your organization. You can explore a wide range of policies to meet staff needs.

Why create wellness policies?

You will reduce the barriers for your staff to engage and participate in wellness by creating or updating policies. By making it easier for them to participate, you give them the access they need to explore. This maximizes participation, grows internal support, and adds visibility to your efforts. As your staff's needs change, your team can find ways to meet them by creating new policies. For more details on why you should create wellness policies, See Creating a Supportive Environment (WELCOA) for tips on how to create or update wellness policies.

How do I create wellness policies?

Use the resources below to help you complete the tasks to create or update wellness policies. See Workplace Wellness: Walk This Way for a resource on state and local policies that support wellness in and around the workplace.

Task 6.1: Find and organize your current wellness policies

  • By organizing your current wellness policies, you will have a better sense of where you are to help you figure out where you need to go with your policy work.

Task 6.2: Review and update your wellness policies.

  • Use the information you collected from the previous steps to find opportunities to increase access to your wellness activities

Task 6.3: Create new wellness policies as needed.

Wellness plan examples
Tips
  • Add time on your calendar for your wellness team to review the policies.
  • Make sure there is alignment with any updated organizational changes.
  • Ensure that leadership reviews and supports the policies.
Step 7: Evaluate progress

What is the evaluation?

An evaluation is your chance to share your wellness program’s success with others. Your evaluation should look at how well you have met the goals you identified in your wellness plan (see Step 4). By creating measurable goals, objectives, or whatever term your organization uses, you have a way to measure and share results. The evaluation should also ask staff for their input. This will help you plan for the next year, giving insight for your next interest survey.

Why evaluate your progress?

If you do not know what did or did not work, how will you know what to improve or what you can build on? You need to evaluate your progress so you can share your story. For more details on why you should evaluate your progress, see Ensure Use of Evaluation Findings and Share Lessons Learned (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). How you evaluate your progress impacts your ongoing leadership support, along with the budget you have or may want.

Task 7.1: Send an evaluation survey to staff

  • Go to the links below to for ideas or templates you can use and customize for your evaluation survey. Make it easy for staff by giving them enough time and the right channels to share their feedback. You need their input to evaluate, plan, and grow your program.

Task 7.2: Use SmartHealth reports to evaluate your organization's SmartHealth data

Task 7.3: Use your wellness plan to evaluate your measurable goals

  • If you have created measurable goals and objectives in your wellness plan, it should be relatively easy to see how far along you are.
Tips to make your measurable goals SMART
  • Specific - Clearly state what you want to accomplish.
  • Measurable - Be clear on how you will track goal achievement.
  • Action-oriented - Include actions that move you closer to achieving the goal.
  • Reasonable/Relevant - Ensure the goal is not out of reach and is aligned with your organization's goals and objectives.
  • Time-oriented - Set a target date for goal completion.

Task 7.4: Evaluate your team structure and workflow process.

Task 7.5: Evaluate the effectiveness of your communication channels

Task 7.6: Create an evaluation report so you can share what did and did not work

Bonus Task 7.7: Use the CDC Worksite Health ScoreCard.

What is the CDC Worksite Health ScoreCard?

The CDC Worksite Health ScoreCardis a tool designed to help employers assess whether they have implemented evidence-based health promotion interventions or strategies in their worksites to prevent heart disease, stroke and related conditions such as hypertension, diabetes and obesity. It provides guidance on key evidence-based strategies that employers can put in place to promote a healthy workforce, increase productivity, and reduce the risk and associated cost of poor employee health.

Why use the ScoreCard?

Employers have a unique opportunity to promote individual health and foster healthy worksites that meet the needs of their employees. There is no one size fits all program, and having a comprehensive program that meets the health needs of your organization has proven benefits to reduce health care expenditures, increase productivity and engagement, and improve overall well-being for your employees.

How to get started

Step 8: Share results

What is sharing results?

Sharing results keeps everyone in the loop. You started your wellness journey for the year and this is a great way to help close the circle for everyone involved. You can share what did and did not work so you can gear up and plan for next year.

Why share results?

You need to share your results to tell your wellness story. This will keep both leadership and staff connected to your program, building a sense of ownership for everyone involved.

How do I share results?

Use the resources below to help you complete the tasks to share results.

Task 8.1: Recognize and award your wellness team, volunteers, and leaders

Task 8.2: Share evaluation results with leadership

Task 8.3: Share evaluation results with staff

Healthy Nutrition Guidelines

In a collaborative effort with the Department of Health to improve worksite wellness, we want all the organizations we work with to adopt and implement the Healthy Nutrition Guidelines. Learn more about the Healthy Nutrition Guidelines.

Contact

Email: Washington Wellness 
Phone: 360-725-1700

Related links