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The workplace setting is a effective, but often overlooked, element in managing employee health. Here we will identify some of the best-practices in beginning a Corporate Health Promotion Program that supports your organization’s employee health strategy and allows employees to take charge of their own health. For example, a Corporate Health Promotion Program that includes a smoke-free workplace policy improves the likelihood that employees will try to quit tobacco use and will quit smoking successfully. Similarly, a Corporate Health Promotion Program that includes discounting healthy foods in your cafeteria and vending machines helps increase employees’ consumption of healthy foods which supports your investment in disease management programs for employees with diabetes, heart disease or hypertension. The following will guide you through the ten key steps in beginning a Corporate Health Promotion Program and workplace setting that promotes employee health.

In an era of ever-increasing healthcare costs and fierce competition, organizations have a vested interest in the health of their employees. Research has found that, on average, employees with healthy behaviors (such as not smoking or being active for 30 minutes a day) incur lower healthcare expenses, are absent from work less often, and are more productive when at work (higher presenteeism) than employees with unhealthy behaviors.

Corporate Health Promotion Program: Securing Upper Management Support

Corporate Health Promotion Program support from the uppermost level of leadership is essential to your success in beginning a culture of health within your workplace. Look for Corporate Health Promotion Program support from a leader who is respected by and can influence other leaders. (It’s not necessary that he or she be the fittest executive within your organization just that they directly support the Corporate Health Promotion Program.) You will be relying on this culture-of-health champion to advocate for changes that you recommend and to ensure the organization allocates adequate Corporate Health Promotion Program resources (staff, time, and money) to maintain and improve the workplace policies, physical setting, and social norms.

Gain Corporate Health Promotion Program Staff and Budget

The creation and maintenance of a Corporate Health Promotion Program within your company needs to be someone’s priority. However, unless your company is quite large, you likely don’t need to hire a full-time staff person for the Corporate Health Promotion Program. There are a number of ways to find an individual with the needed skills to guide and support your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Program.

Establishing facilities and Corporate Health Promotion Program policies, such as those allowing employees to be physically active during the workday, does not need to be expensive, but it does require adequate and sustained financing. If possible, include the creation of a workplace setting that supports the Corporate Health Promotion Program as a permanent part of the operating budget; that helps to ensure it’s an ongoing priority for your company.

Worker Involvement in the Corporate Health Promotion Program

Setting up a representative group of employees to advise your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Program ensures that improvements in workplace facilities, policies and practices address the true needs and barriers of all groups of employees. In addition, these employees can serve as the front-line Corporate Health Promotion Program supporters of policies and practices with their peers.

Develop a Corporate Health Promotion Program Vision and “Brand”

A Corporate Health Promotion Program vision and a brand are effective first steps in moving a Corporate Health Promotion Program from an idea to a reality. What would you like your workplace environment to look like five years from now? A succinct Corporate Health Promotion Program vision statement summarizes for all (employees and leaders alike) the reasons for beginning a Corporate Health Promotion Program. It also reminds everyone of the link between employee health and your company’s ability to achieve its overall mission.

Branding your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Program conveys to employees that the company’s commitment and support of healthy behaviors is important and is here to stay. Choose a Corporate Health Promotion Program name and logo that resonate with employees. Then use that brand on all Corporate Health Promotion Program communications with employees about the policies, facilities and programs your company offers to promote healthy behaviors.

Determine Your Current Corporate Health Promotion Program Situation

Exactly how your company creates a Corporate Health Promotion Program that promotes healthy eating, physical activity, and reduces tobacco use will depend on the unique characteristics of your company and employee population.

Determine how the current workplace facilities, policies, and unwritten norms support — or discourage — healthy behaviors.

Gather information on the health and health-related behaviors of your employee population. The most common method is by using a validated health risk assessment. If you don’t have data specific to your employees, you can estimate the prevalence of different health risks and behaviors within your employee population using state or national data. Note: Information on employees’ health interests alone is not sufficient; but can be a useful supplement to health risk data and might help you set priorities.

Set Corporate Health Promotion Program Goals and Priorities

Use what you’ve discovered about employee health and about your current workplace setting to determine your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Program priorities. From those Corporate Health Promotion Program priorities, define clear and measurable Corporate Health Promotion Program goals for improving employee health and your company’s culture. Well written goals will provide the basis for planning and for measuring your progress.

Choose Corporate Health Promotion Program Strategies

Focus your company’s Corporate Health Promotion Program resources (time, energy and money) on tactics that are most likely to produce results: a rise in healthy eating, a rise in physical activity, and a reduction in tobacco use. There’s no need to guess at what might work. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reviewed thousands of studies and has identified the Corporate Health Promotion Program approaches most likely to result in significant, lasting, and widespread improvements in health behaviors. Those Corporate Health Promotion Program tactics are included in the physical activity, tobacco, and healthy eating sections of this website.

The formula for Corporate Health Promotion Program success is to make the healthier choices the easier choices.

Implement Corporate Health Promotion Program Strategies

Once you’ve chosen your Corporate Health Promotion Program Strategies, it can be useful to arrange the work on a timeline. The “right” amount of time for implementing each Corporate Health Promotion Program strategy depends on the staff time, budget, and business demands of your company. Work plans maintain your efforts moving and help to ensure that plans to start a Corporate Health Promotion Program stay on track even if there are changes in staffing or other challenges.

Communicate and Educate About the Corporate Health Promotion Program

Ensure employees are aware of the Corporate Health Promotion Program opportunities you’ve provided. Planning your Corporate Health Promotion Program communications allows you to communicate regularly with employees without overwhelming them at any one time.

Monitor and Report Your Corporate Health Promotion Program Results

At the same time that you plan your Corporate Health Promotion Program Strategies, think about how you’ll measure success. It’s much easier to gather information – or to start systems for collecting information — before you implement a Corporate Health Promotion Program strategy rather than as an afterthought. Keep in mind that you’re likely to see improvements in employee morale and/or behaviors before you see decreases in absenteeism or healthcare claims.

Report both your Corporate Health Promotion Program successes in building a healthy workplace environment (such as complete implementation of a policy that provides employees time for walking during the workday), and Corporate Health Promotion Program successes in getting employees to take charge of their health (a rise in the number of employees who contacted the stop-smoking program, or a rise in the number of fruit-cups purchased from the cafeteria following a promotion and price-cut).