Corporate Wellness 101

The Small Business Journal of Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin recently published a great primer on how to launch a corporate wellness program. The article contains loads of success stories from local companies and some excellent general reminders about key aspects of employee wellness plans.

For example, it lists these essential, if well-known, steps for creating your own wellness program:

• CEO support
• Create wellness teams
• Collect data
• Design the plan
• Choose interventions and activities
• Create a supportive environment
• Evaluate the model
• Wellness resources for employers
  

One particularly pertinent warning, from an expert quoted in the piece:

Well City Milwaukee executive director Janet McMahon said many companies make the mistake of jumping into a wellness program without a plan. Well City Milwaukee is an initiative focused on getting a critical mass of employers in the city on board with wellness programs to earn a Well City accreditation from the Wellness Council of America.

“A business really needs to evaluate the culture of its workplace and find out what is going to work within all the sociological nuances of the company,” McMahon said.

We couldn’t agree more!