Advwellness Masthead

April 2010
In This Issue
All about team work - Wellness Committees
A journey of many miles
Beach Runner
 
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The choices you make about your lifestyle are as important for your business as they are for your well being. This newsletter provides insights on how employees' health choices impact your company, articles that will help you make healthy choices, and other news from AdvancingWellness.
 
It is all about team work - Wellness Committees

Employee health promotion programs are not something that one person owns or creates. It takes a committed cross-functional team to plan and implement a successful program.  A Wellness Committee is considered a best practice in worksite health promotion. Involvement by representatives from all employee groups provides the voice of the employee in guiding the program.

The Wellness Committee has formal responsibility for guiding, supporting and promoting the health promotion program. The members of the committee should represent all employee groups and be representative of the diversity of the workforce. For example, members of the committee might include hourly and salaried employees, union and non-union, office and field employees. Also provide consideration for gender, ethnic groups, and various ages. Candidate selection of members of the team should represent a variety of viewpoints, perspectives, diversity, and personalities.Committee Meeting

The team should be a workable size, while still meeting the requirements to represent all stakeholders. In small organizations this may be as few as 3 or 4 people, while in a larger organization it might be 10-12. There may be subcommittees established who have responsibility for specific activities or functions within the team.
When starting a new worksite health promotion program, we recommend that Senior Management appoint the Committee. This appointment demonstrates a level of commitment, gives permission to participate in the activities of the Committee on company time, and reinforces the importance of this initiative.

Some of AdvancingWellness client's have Advisory Committees in addition to the Wellness Committee. This Advisory Committee is typically found in larger organizations and provides an oversight role, as opposed to a more operational, hands-on role.

Once the Committee is identified, it is important to provide training and to establish the protocols with which the group will work. Training is important, since most participants will have little knowledge or experience with worksite health promotion programs. Training includes background on understanding behavior change, marketing and promoting health promotion programs, and program evaluation. The protocols that should be defined include frequency of meetings, decision-making processes, and communication mechanisms.

After a Wellness Committee has been in place for a while, we often encourage rotation of committee members. This helps eliminate burnout from members or their feeling overburdened by the responsibilities, and allows others to participate. This provides an influx of new ideas, perspectives and renewed enthusiasm.

At AdvancingWellness we have had the joyful experience of working with many Wellness Committees. The creative ideas that are generated and the teamwork demonstrated are remarkable. The Wellness Committee is key to an effective worksite health promotion program and contributes to the overall success of the program.
A journey of many miles

Spring is in full bloom. This is my favorite time of year. In Massachusetts, we have a holiday - Patriots' Day - that reminds us of all things Spring. Patriots' Day is the civic holiday commemorating the anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. While there are many activities commemorating the holiday that take place on or around the holiday, there is another event that attracts much attention. As tradition would have it, the Boston Marathon is run on Patriots' Day. Each year thousands of committed individuals from not only the Boston area, but from all over the world, come to Boston to participate in this classic event.

Each year I know a number of people who make the commitment to 'run Boston'. They spend months training. Each has to work diligently at setting a series of short-term goals to reach their objective of finishing the race. For some people, just getting into the Boston race is an intermediate goal, as it requires qualifying with an age specific time or by fund raising for a charity. For all who make this commitment, they become practiced at goal setting. These athletes provide good examples of the importance of using short-term goals to help us achieve a long-term goal.Runner
 
By the time we are adults, most of us are pretty experienced at goal setting. But we also have experienced the reality of the effort and commitment it takes to achieve our goals. Short-term goals help us break the bigger effort into small, manageable chunks. In the case of my friends training for Boston, they start with building a base of miles, then systematically adding a longer run each week, until they reach their desired distance.

Most of us will never run a marathon, but we can use this as our metaphor to identify the specific, measurable short-term goals that will help us achieve something bigger. For example, if your goal is to walk an hour a day, five days a week, don't expect to reach that all at once. A good short-term goal might be to walk twice a day for 15-minutes on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. From there you can gradually increase the duration and number of days a week.

As my friends who finished this week's race teach me, every small goal achieved keeps us on the road to the bigger goal. What are your short- and long-term goals?