Choosing a Wellness Business.
When staffing your wellness program you need to consider whether to hire a wellness staff or contract with wellness specialists from outside your organization.
Small and medium size worksites do not ordinarily have a wellness professional on staff. When your worksite is in this category, you’ll need to contract with providers outside your corporation.
Large corporations have a few options. They can hire a staff solely for the wellness program, they can contract with outside wellness providers, or they can use a combination of internal staff and outside providers.
When picking 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.
Wellness Business Staff
Health experts become wellness experts when they are trained in the full range of wellness activities. Wellness experts are generalists who come from a wide variety of backgrounds and schooling.
They may be nurses, dietitians, health educators, counselors, exercise physiologists, or have other backgrounds. But as well to their primary training, they know something about all wellness topics, including smoking, stress, exercise, and nutrition.
They also know how to engage and support individuals in making and sustaining health improvements and have good individuals skills.
Generally, wellness specialists at worksites fall into three broad categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.
• Wellness screeners introduce employees to the program, take health measurements, collect health-related information, provide initial counseling, and help employees define for themselves what they need and want in a wellness program.
• Wellness 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.
• Wellness instructors teach courses and minigroups on different health topics.
A wellness program in a small company may be staffed by a single staff individuals who fills all three roles. Larger worksites will use different people to fill these roles.
When choosing staff or choosing among wellness companies, ask the following questions –
• Do prospective staff members have a range of health backgrounds that’ll provide appropriate specialistise in the topics to be addressed?
• Have prospective staff members functioned well as wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and/or wellness instructors?
• Will this staff include individuals from the ethnic and racial backgrounds found in your worker 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 members have a warm, but expert, counseling style when interacting with employees?