Workplace wellness

- mostly organized and studied in big business - somewhat unproven on best practices for small business, especially 10-20 people

- leaders must walk the talk and totally genuinely buyin

- many free resources

Broker, tpa and specialized firms - Vendors can help - Small rewards work as incentives. Many programs have found success with small prizes or small cash rewards, $100 or less. - It is very difficult to get high participation rates of employees in any specific prevention or wellness practice. Many consider 50-60% participation a good result. Don't expect 90% participation.

• An active and robust wellness committee works.
  • Successful strategies include membership distributed through the organization,
  • diversity of sex and ages provide different life perspectives and health issues,
  • turnover on the committee to spread the education and experience.

Self funded health plans

An organization with a self-funded health insurance plan can more easily benefit from a workplace wellness program. Small organizations that purchase health insurance coverage for their employees will typically be charged a rate by the insurance company that does not recognize the health of the organizations employees. In contrast a self-funded Works better for self-funded firm as they can reap the lowered costs and healthier workforce vs firm in small group market

Resources

• WELCOA (The Wellness Council of America) in an employer association with 5,000+ members that has built an array of resources and best practices for its members over 25 years. There are both free and fee based resources.
• Healthy Employees, Healthy Business - Easy, Affordable Ways to Promote Workplace Wellness, Ilona Bray, J.D., February 2012, 2nd Edition. Published by NOLO, Law for All, this instructional book will help any organization studying or implementing a wellness program; including helpful worksheets and checklists. The website has many specific articles on wellness.
• Advancing Wellness has a website, newsletter and blog with many ideas, case studies and best practices for small organizations on wellness and specializes in consulting and wellness project management.
• FAIR Health is a national, independent, not-for-profit corporation whose mission is to bring transparency to healthcare costs and health insurance information. They strive to develop robust, unbiased data products and solutions to meet the needs of those we serve, which includes all stakeholders in the healthcare sector, including cost lookup tools for consumers.
• CMS website
• Partnership for Prevention has many resources, including a detailed and careful study that ranks by health impact and cost effectiveness 25 clinical preventive services File:Priorities for americas health executive summary.pdf
• Case Studies by Partnership for Prevention of workplace wellness programs in many types of organizations and employers File:Leading by example - case study and strategies.pdf

Author

The author of this page is Terry Gardiner

Terry Gardiner is the founder and President of Silver Lining Seafoods and NorQuest Seafoods - a medium-size Alaska seafood processing company; and currently a Board member of the Anvil Corporation, an employee-owned company specializing in oil and gas engineering.

His co-operative experiences include member director of the Commercial Fishermen Co-operative association; creation of legislation for the Alaska Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank; and advisor to the US Dept of Health and Social Services for the state Health CO-OPs.

Terry served ten years as a member of the Alaska House of Representatives -several legislative committee chairmanships, Speaker of the House, Chairman of the Alaska Criminal Code Commission and board member on various state and federal boards and commissions.

His non-profit experiences include National Policy Director for the Small Business Majority in Washington DC; working with the Herndon Alliance and ForTerra.

Terry authored the leadership book, "Six-Word Lessons to Build Effective Leaders: 100 Lessons to Equip Your People to Create Winning Organizations".

For more check: Terry Gardiner Long bio