Pedometers and Heart Rate Monitors

Make heart rate monitors available to your staff to allow them to keep track of their heart rate, and make sure stress levels at work are not adversely affecting their cardiovascular health. Pedometers work to encourage employees to take more steps in a day, more steps add up to better health!

Ask The Employees

For your wellness program to succeed, it needs to not only be targeted to the health concerns of employees and families, but also be an initiative that your employees want. Survey your employees and ask them what they are interested in seeing. The bigger the employee buy-in, the more effective and successful your wellness program will be.

Rearranging leads to Change

Change the contents of your vending machine, simple substitutions make a big difference. For example, substitute a bag of unbuttered popcorn for the potato chips. Post a list of "healthy" items on the vending machine. Move the machine so employees have to walk a few extra steps to get to it. There are vendors out there that provide only healthy choices for vending machines - investigate them.

Communicate Agressively

With wellness programs as with any new initiative you must be consistent and repetitive. Get the word out early and often via email. Non email ways to communicate include flyers and posters everywhere you can- including bathroom stalls. Sometimes it takes 6 "touches" before the message gets through. Be persistent and creative.

Jazz Up Your Wellness Program

Wellness programs should be dynamic and changing to keep employees motivated and interested. A series of three or four incentive based programs throughout the year focusing on a different area works well to motivate employees to make healthy lifestyle changes.

Consumerism Scavenger Hunt

One way to help your employees understand their benefits is to put together a scavenger hunt. The answers should be found by reading through all of the materials they have on their benefits or found by going to the benefits page on your intranet.