In the previous posts, we shared the complete history of corporate health and wellness. We also discussed program design and development. Then, we showed you how to properly promote and launch employee health and fitness incentive programs. We then shared how to evaluate the programs you’ve implemented.
Now the next step…..
Within corporate wellness you will find that each company offers its own unique and interesting challenges. The current health risks, the management, the budget, and the current culture represent some of the problems that you will undertake as you work within a company to try to improve wellness.
Company size represents another factor. Small companies must be treated much differently than large companies, and large companies may have their own problems that are not present within small companies. In this chapter, you’ll see some of the problems that may occur within these different sized companies and the steps you can take to address them.
Employee Health Incentive Programs for Small Businesses and Smaller Medium Sized Companies
The idea of profiting from corporate wellness occurred primarily from larger companies. Creating a gym in the workplace makes a lot of sense when you are supporting thousands of employees and need to give them a central location to exercise, and the cost for the setup is significantly smaller when you consider the cost per employee.
Yet wellness is healthy and beneficial for men and women no matter what size the company is. Small businesses still need to focus on wellness within their company, but the size of their company plays a role in what programs you choose and how you put them into place. Indeed, for small companies especially, there is no one single way to address companies of such a small size. Every small company needs its own specific programs that are tailored to its needs.
Data collection problems
Your methods are supposed to be driven by your data. However, data collection in a small workplace can be difficult. When a workplace only has 10 to 50 people, every single data point is given more importance – sometimes more importance than it should – because each individual represents a high percentage of the company.
You should still complete health risk assessments because they will give you measurable data, but when it comes to what programs to create, you may also want to consider a more holistic, core program model that focuses on the most common problem areas regardless of the results of the HRA. Unless you notice something that stands out considerably, sometimes working with the results of your data may not be as beneficial for the company in the long run.
Costs, Budgeting, and ROI
As a corporate wellness coach, you will find that small businesses do suffer from realistic cost problems. In some cases, the costs are going to be too disproportionate to the benefits that a small company will receive. In other cases, the company may not have the budget to supply as large a wellness proposal as you would like for the company.
One thing to note, however, is that the size of the business may also be a strength – at least in terms of cost cutting. The smaller the company, the easier it is for you to personally meet with everyone within the company, which will cut down on your marketing costs. Similarly, you can gain direct employee feedback and may find that participation should be high – all of this will help cut down on wasted spending.
There are also more options that may be open for small companies that are cost effective and not plausible with a large company. For large companies’ informational sessions may be expensive to plan and may not receive a high turnout considering the costs. For a small company, you can often gather everyone in a lunchroom for a learning session while providing them with a free healthy meal and cut down on all additional spending dramatically.
It may not be possible to create fully functional fitness center for the company, but arranging a deal with a nearby fitness center, covering the costs, and motivating employees to attend as a group is much easier in a small workplace, where everyone can be involved in the planning and implementing of wellness campaigns. Partnering with local businesses, including fitness centers, doctors, stress counselors and more is a great way to provide employees with the same benefits as an internal campaign for much less of the cost.
Although there are some problems with creating a complete wellness campaign, there are plenty of things that are more cost efficient for you as a corporate wellness coach. Find ways low-cost ways that are more beneficial for the small workplace and you will be able to create a budget that produces an above average ROI.
Evaluation Issues
Many evaluation techniques are expensive. For large companies this expense is usually not usually a problem, because when you spread it out over each individual employee the resulting cost is inexpensive. For smaller companies it may be a large cost for not much gain.
Similarly, another problem is that evaluations are going to be easily skewed by one or two changes in staff. Polling a small worksite, you may find that smoking is a worksite health issue. If one individual quits, suddenly it may no longer appear to be an issue. It’s difficult to tell how successful that is. There is little you can do about the problems with evaluating such a small office, so during your planning phase, come up with objectives and measurements that acknowledge the evaluation problems within a small workplace.
Concerns About Major Changes
You will also find that small business has concerns about what you can expect in terms of change within a small company. If a large percentage of the employees are obese, for example, how can you expect that many of them are going to use the programs and live a healthier lifestyle?
Yet research has shown that this is not true for small businesses. Aggressive expectations of major change can be met provided that the company is willing to follow through with their program plans. Work with the company to establish clear expectations, but it is okay to create lofty goals, provided that the company is ready and willing to do whatever it takes to reach those goals.
Additional Small Business Tips
The above list represents some of the challenges you may face as a corporate wellness coach hoping to provide wellness to a small business. There are also several other tips to help you improve your ability to provide wellness to a small business:
CEO and Management Support
If you can get the complete support of the CEO and manager, you will find that it becomes much easier to get employee participation and measurable results. Small businesses tend to be closer, and if you can get complete management support, you are going to be able to drastically change the company culture. WELCOA recommends two things:
Boot camp – CEOs and Managers that go through a wellness boot camp often find the results to be incredibly enjoyable and can be more supportive to the idea of complete wellness. The boot camp should be intensive, and challenge management to truly try and achieve great results.
ROI Justification – It can be hard for CEOs and managers to believe that wellness is worth the financial investment, no matter how much they agree that it is important for their employees.
Use all available evidence to present in-depth information about the benefits of providing small businesses with wellness and you should have no problem justifying your programs to management.
CEO support is easily the best way to help you change the culture in a small business, and the effects of that support will be seen throughout the company. Because smaller businesses tend to be closer, CEO support will go a long way towards ensuring employees participate in the program.
Create an Employee Wellness Center
When most companies think about wellness centers, they think about setting up some giant gym that requires a lot of money, upkeep, and time. Wellness centers do not have to be dedicated spaces that require a lot of excess funding. Wellness centers can be as simple as a room with two treadmills, healthy vending machines, and a lot of information about ways to keep healthy at work.
Wellness centers allow you to create a central space for wellness information, tools, and support. They do not necessarily need to be enormous, dedicated rooms. They can be a modified large closet, provided they are utilized to improve wellness within the company.
Pay Attention to Employee Interest Surveys
Employee interest surveys are important, because they supply you with information about what a company is going to be willing to do, based on what their interests are. They are even more important in a small business, because to use your budget effectively as a corporate wellness coach, you are going to need to ensure that your programs are going to be used by as many or all the business staff. Employee interest surveys will help you figure out what will be most effective if you put them in action within the company.
Use Group Meetings and Learning Sessions
Experts suggest that one of the most effective ways to utilize a wellness budget is to get the company together for lunch and use that as an opportunity to teach employees about wellness. The idea is that with a small investment (the cost of a healthy lunch and possibly a speaker), you can inform the entire company at a single meeting, and give everyone the opportunity to ask questions, discuss, etc., while rewarding them with tasty food. These “lunch and learns” are less likely at a large company and may be challenging to organize, depending on the size of the company.
Put Someone in Charge of Wellness
In a smaller workplace, you do not really need an entire wellness committee. Large wellness committees represent a large portion of the workplace that will not be working, and some of the benefits of wellness committees (such as getting the word out about wellness and helping change the culture) are less necessary when the culture is much smaller and limited to only a few employees.
That said, having someone in the company whose mission it is to improve wellness throughout the organization can be highly beneficial. They will have inside information about how the company operates and can act as a leader that can take control of how wellness operates.
Created Varied Activity Programs
When a business is small, some of the programs you may have wanted to create will not work as well. Interest is what drives success, and a single idea that may be exciting at first may suffer from lost interest over time, which in turn will affect how effective the program is.
So, another option as a corporate wellness coach is to try a different approach – present different types of program options that change over the course of the year. To reduce costs, each of these options could be part of already-in-place communities (sports organizations, YMCA, etc.), so that the employees are constantly experiencing the prospect of new and interesting activities that already exist within the local community, helping you also save money on program costs will improving everyone’s interests.
Small Companies Need Wellness Too
Small and medium sized businesses account for over 90% of the businesses in the USA, and employ almost half of the total employees currently working. Larger companies may have pioneered most wellness programs, but smaller companies can still benefit from the value that wellness provides, and employees themselves still need wellness in their lives.
As a corporate wellness coach, finding new and interesting ways to integrate wellness into small businesses should be a priority. These small businesses can easily benefit from the value of wellness, provided you are willing to change your approach to benefit this type of corporate environment.
Employee Health Programs for Large Companies with Remote Worksites
Small companies clearly have their own wellness issues, but large companies have their own problems as well. One such example is with companies that have smaller remote worksites away from the main campus. Indeed, it is extremely common to find that companies will have a large corporate headquarters and smaller worksites spread out over the city, state, or country.
Wellness needs to reach these employees too, and in some cases some of the programs you would normally implement for a company of that size may not be as valuable if the company is spread far enough out. Some of the problems and solutions for companies with remote worksites include:
Employee Participation – The smaller the worksite, the harder it will be to find several participants that makes creating programs there worthwhile. If only 2 or 3 employees would take advantage of a specific program, there might not be much benefit to putting it into place.
Poor Data Collection – When a worksite is too small, the data you receive may be too skewed towards specific health risks when those numbers may change dramatically simply by the hiring or firing of a new employee.
Vendor Costs – It may not make much financial sense to pay for the vendors that you have coming into your worksite. For example, if you schedule a seminar with a leading wellness expert, the remote worksite may be too small and too far away to participate.
Local Availability – Smaller worksites may not have as many or similar nearby facilities to accommodate their wellness needs. Without community resources available you may have to change your plans.
Support Changes – It is much more difficult to get the support of all of the executives and managers if you are not able to communicate with all of them directly. At remote sites it can be much harder to reach out and win them over.
There are also issues with how easy it is to manage the program, ensure it is being used correctly, and monitor its success.
All of these represent possible challenges that you might face while you are coaching. To get over these problems, consider implementing the following strategies:
Assign a Wellness Coordinator at Each Remote Worksite
It is always a good idea to have someone at each worksite that oversees and accountable for ensuring wellness within the workplace. At smaller worksites it may be better if this is someone at management level, but having an on-site coordinator can help to make sure that programs are in place and working successfully, and they can report to you with any thoughts, needs, etc.
Assign a Separate Remote Wellness Committee
You may also want to consider giving the offsite workplaces their own wellness committee. Find people that understand the issues of offsite businesses and allow your team to come up with new strategies for implementing wellness in the offsite workplaces.
Focus on Core Wellness Techniques
It may not be financially possible to put advanced wellness campaigns into each workplace, and the data itself may be too skewed to provide you with any accurate information. So instead, you can adopt core wellness procedures for each remote workplace that are less expensive and address all the major concerns, such as physical fitness, smoking, etc.
Record and Share Informational Sessions
These days you can post and share everything online. When you have a speaker or discussion that may interest the entire company, tape it all and post it on YouTube or some other file sharing site. That way all employees can view the video when they have a moment and still receive the same information as the rest of the company.
Personalized Wellness
You may also want to adapt a method of wellness that speaks to everyone’s personal needs. WELCOA suggests the following:
- Provide each employee with an HRA, with incentives.
- Give them a report based on that HRA.
- Supply them with a specific, individually oriented health program.
- Send them educational resources to learn from in their work/spare time.
- Address high risk individuals directly.
- Provide high value incentives to employees that participate in their own personalized health management priorities.
This puts them in charge of their own wellness but gives them enough personal incentive to put those changes into action. It also makes sure that their specific needs are addressed. All of this should be completed according to HIPAA principles.
Dealing with Issues in Company Size
Corporate wellness coaching is an important part of companies of all shapes and sizes. As you work as a corporate wellness coach, you will find that each individual business represents its own unique challenges.
When you identify problems, select programs, initiate, and evaluate the wellness programs you are looking to place in a company, always remember to consider company size and how the programs you are using are valuable to both the company and the employees. Only by taking the number of employees in each business into account and addressing any issues with data collection can you be certain that the programs you are employing are likely to benefit the company as you hope them to do.
Leading professional training courses for this career path:
Certified Corporate Wellness Coach
Certified Master Health and Wellness Coach
Certified Wellness Coach
Certified Integrative Health Coach
