Health Promotion : Corporate Wellness Programs -  Picking a Wellness Company.

When staffing your Employee Health Promotion Program you need to consider whether to hire a wellness staff or contract with wellness specialists from outside your organization.

Small and medium size workplace s don’t usually have a wellness specialist on staff. When your workplace is in this category, you will need to contract with providers outside your company .

Large companies have several choices . They can hire a staff solely for the Employee Wellness Program, they can contract with outside wellness providers, or they are able to use a combination of internal staff and outside providers.

When selecting  a provider some key questions in the areas of staff, program structure, process, and effectiveness need to be addressed. Each of these key questions is discussed in the following sections.

Employee Health Promotion Program Staff

Health specialists become wellness specialists when they are trained in the full range of wellness activities. Wellness specialists are generalists who come from a broad variety of backgrounds and schooling. They might be nurses, dietitians, health educators, counselors, exercise physiologists, or have other backgrounds. But in addition 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.

Usually , wellness specialists at worksite s fall into three broad categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.

• Wellness screeners introduce workers to the program, take health measurements, collect health-related information, provide initial counseling, and help workers define for themselves what they need and want in a Corporate Wellness Program.

• Health counselors work with staff members after the screening to help them create and carry out a plan to reduce their risks and improve their health.

• Health instructors teach classes and minigroups on different health topics.

A Employee Wellness Program in a small company can be staffed by a single staff individuals who fills all three roles. Bigger workplace s will use different individuals  to fill these roles.

When selecting  staff or selecting  among vendor s, ask the following questions -

• Do prospective employees have a range of health backgrounds that will provide appropriate expertise in the topics to be addressed?

• Have prospective employees functioned well as wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and/or wellness instructors?

• Will this staff include people  from the racial and ethnic backgrounds found in your staff member population?

• Is each staff member comfortable with the range of backgrounds found in your staff member population, and able to communicate effectively with the various social and educational levels of your staff members ?

• Do employees have a warm, but specialist, counseling style when interacting with employees ?