Posted by Corporate Wellness | Posted in Corporate Wellness, Wellness Programs | Posted on 31-08-2010
When staffing your wellness program you need to consider whether to hire a wellness staff or contract with wellness specialists from outside your corporation.
Small and medium size worksites do not typically have a wellness expert on staff. When your worksite is in this category, you’ll need to contract with providers outside your corporation.
Large corporations have several options. They can hire a staff solely for the health promotion program, they can contract with outside wellness providers, or they are able to use a combination of internal staff and outside providers.
When choosing a provider some key questions in the areas of staff, wellness program structure, process, and effectiveness need to be addressed. Each of these key questions is discussed in the following sections.
Health Promotion Company Staff
Health experts become wellness experts when they’re trained in the full range of wellness activities. Health Promotion experts are generalists who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and schooling.
They could be nurses, dietitians, health educators, counselors, exercise physiologists, or have other backgrounds. But as well to their main training, they know something about all wellness topics, including smoking, stress, exercise, and nutrition.
They also know how to engage and support people in making and sustaining health improvements and have good people skills.
Ordinarily, wellness experts at workplaces fall into three wide categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.
o Wellness screeners introduce personnel to the wellness program, take health measurements, collect health-related information, provide initial counseling, and help personnel define for themselves what they need and want in a wellness program.
o Health Promotion counselors work with staff members after the screening to help them develop and carry out a plan to reduce their risks and improve their health.
o Wellness instructors teach classes and minigroups on different health topics.
A health promotion program in a small business can be staffed by a single staff individuals who fills all three roles. Larger worksites will use different individuals to fill these roles.
When picking staff or picking among wellness companies, ask the following questions -
o Do prospective workers have a range of health backgrounds that’ll provide appropriate expertise in the topics to be addressed?
o Have prospective staff members functioned well as wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and/or wellness instructors?
o Will this staff include people from the ethnic and racial backgrounds found in your employee population?
o Is each worker comfortable with the range of backgrounds found in your worker population, and able to communicate effectively with the various social and educational levels of your employees?
o Do employees have a warm, but expert, counseling style when interacting with employees?