Wellness Programs : Choosing a Health Promotion Business.

When staffing your wellness program you need to consider whether to hire a wellness staff or contract with wellness experts from outside your corporation.

Small and medium size worksites don’t normally have a wellness expert on staff. If your worksite is in this category, you will need to contract with providers outside your company.

Large companies have a few 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 selecting  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 Business Staff

Health specialists become wellness specialists when they are trained in the full range of wellness activities. Health Promotion 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 besides 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.

Typically, wellness experts at workplaces fall into three broad categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.

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

• Health Promotion counselors work with workforce after the screening to help them develop and carry out a plan to reduce their risks and improve their health.

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

A wellness program in a small business could be staffed by a single staff individuals who fills all three roles. Bigger workplaces will use different people  to fill these roles.

When selecting  staff or selecting  among wellness businesses, ask the following questions -

• Do prospective staff have a range of health backgrounds that’ll provide appropriate specialistise in the topics to be addressed?

• Have prospective workforce 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 employee population?

• 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?

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