How To Design A Corporate Wellness Program With eLearning
So your employees have new-year fitness goals – and you really want to support them. However, your company doesn't have the budget to subsidize a monthly gym membership for every staff member.
Don't sweat it too much – there's a bit of eLearning for that. With a minimal financial investment, you can develop a corporate wellness program for your business that relies primarily on the gems of the internet.
It's true: More and more companies are adopting eLearning solutions to school employees in a variety of areas. Why not use this digital framework to design your corporate wellness program, too?
Here are 8 tips on how to promote your employees’ health online, without breaking the bank.
- Offer online courses.
For up to $100 per course, you can enroll your staffers in one of many corporate wellness training programs available on sites like OpenSesame. Your employees can choose from a wide range of course topics, including inspiration and motivation, rest and rejuvenation, smart eating and stress management. For example, one course, called Body Fuel, teaches workers how their daily diet and movement habits affect their performance on the job. Employees who complete the course can learn how to increase productivity, improve communication and lead healthier lifestyles. - Use Health Management software.
Consider subscribing your employees to online health services like Sonic Boom Wellness or Keas Health Management. These corporate wellness platforms, which promote themselves as health-optimization companies, give your staff members the opportunity to track their health and fitness goals and download reports of their progress – all from their smartphones or computers. The programs also encourage active participation in healthy-living activities with rewards such as online points that your employees can exchange for cash, once they've reached a specific target. Users can also enroll in a specific challenge of the day – and they'll gain extra points for completing it daily. - Schedule a webinar.
Hosting a webinar can be a really effective way to reach a large audience –like your entire office base– for a small cost. Online services like WellSteps offer short, specialized webinars on wellness topics such as fitness, nutrition, and goal setting presented by a variety of wellness experts. The last WellSteps webinar was January 29 and involved an interview with Dr. Dee Edington, workplace wellness professional and professor emeritus from the University of Michigan Health Management Research Center. He spoke about his new book, “Shared Values – Shared Results”, which conveniently discusses the research and science behind corporate wellness. The slides and recording of the webinar are both available. - Create an online cookbook.
You don't have to create the software – that's what sites like Blurb and Living Cookbook are for. These services make it easy for you to launch a corporate wellness program by setting up a virtual recipe book for your employees. Your workers can download healthy recipes, manage their grocery lists, and quickly look up the nutrition statistics of their meals. They can even make use of an online calendar that lets them drag and drop recipes to specific dates, and receive reminders of what healthy dish they intend to make on which day. - Fund a Fitbit.
Your employees can track more than just their eating behavior – how about their fitness and sleep? Fitness Corporate Wellness offers products that can do just that. The Fitbit One Wireless Activity + Sleep Tracker, which users wear on their wrists, tracks steps, floors climbed, distance, and calories during the day, as well as sleep and wake patterns during the night. The Fitbit gadgets are water-resistant and have the ability to sync wirelessly with computers and smartphones. They're also less than $100 each, which makes them a relatively inexpensive investment when you consider you're investing in your workplace wellness. - Cure bad habits.
One of the biggest threats to your employees' health might be smoking – after all, it can lead to cancer, heart disease, and chronic respiratory disorders. Consider using technology to encourage the office to quit. Smokefree.gov, for example, offers virtual quit coaches and quit plans for people willing to stop smoking or chewing tobacco. Your employees can sign up for smokefreeTXT, a service that sends encouragement, tips and advice via text message, or download the quitSTART app, which provides inspiration, lets users track their progress and distracts them from cravings with games and challenges. Best of all, it's totally free. - Pump up the jam.
Studies show music improves mood and, ultimately, quality of life. That improvement can lead to an increase in productivity and creativity in the office. In addition, background music in the workplace can result in fewer accidents, improved alertness and greater team interaction. Why not go online and download some tunes for your employees' health and wellness? You can visit YouTube for a few samples of office background music. Just be sure to play it at an ambient noise level – if it's too loud, it could actually be distracting. - Create a library.
Your company has more than enough storage space on its online network, so consider creating a folder that contains a library of resources on health and wellness topics. Your healthcare provider may even already have a wellness library available for you to share. Whenever your employees need a little encouragement –or just want to see what science says about some fitness or nutrition tidbit– they can use their break to poke around for the latest in health information. You don't have to write the resources yourself, of course. You can download plenty of fitness and nutrition articles from sites like Everyday Health and FitDay. The information is out there, and it's totally free.
New Year, New Yield
Many of the nation's top-rated companies have already implemented a corporate wellness plan, and now it's your turn. You can do it all with a little help from the internet.
Turn just a few ideas into action and you can make your employees happier and healthier this year. Remember, happy and healthy employees equal a happy and healthy business.
