Benchmark #6: Creating a Supportive Environment
It's a big job
Creating an environment that truly supports health is a long-term project that requires real dedication to wellness values and a lot of sustained hard work. The support of top managers is essential. Your wellness team must understand and acknowledge the current environment and be able to envision a healthier one, and have the patience to build that vision a step at a time. It's worth the work. A positive environment can help employees to turn healthy choices into healthy habits.
What You’ll Learn In This Online Monograph
The power of an environment which supports healthy lifestyles
How to make your physical worksite environment more conducive to health
How corporate policies can support health promotion
The importance of recognizing and rewarding wellness achievements
How managers’ participation promotes a well culture
The importance of a stable, ongoing health promotion program
How to foster employees’ sense that it is their program
Wanted:
An environment that supports healthy lifestyles
How does it feel to walk into your workplace? Do people look happy? Is the place well lit and cheerful? Do you feel welcome, wanted and energized? Or do you feel a gloom come over you, and count the hours until you can leave?
The influence of the worksite environment on the health and wellness of employees is profound. First there is the physical look, feel, smell, and sounds of the place. Then you’re affected by the policies, like whether others are allowed to smoke around you. After awhile, more subtle factors begin to affect you. Do your attempts to adopt a healthier lifestyle get recognized at work, or are they sabotaged? Are your managers inspiring you by being healthy role models? Do you get regular opportunities to learn healthier behavior?
In a supportive environment, employees feel that the organization they work for provides them with encouragement, opportunity, and rewards for healthy lifestyles. And the spirit that results is highly contagious. Employees who feel cared for are naturally more loyal and productive.
Read on for five big ideas for transforming your workplace environment into one that truly supports the wellness of your employees and organization.
Five Big Ideas
1. Friendly facilities
When you enter a worksite, do you feel comfortable? Could you be happy working there? Is there enough light and clean air? Are there pleasant work areas, places to eat decent food, take a walk before lunch? Close your eyes. How does it smell? Sound? Do the workers have enough space? There’s no doubt that our physical environment affects us, from basic safety matters to subtle factors that can cause or reduce stress. Healthy environments often have these features:
Vending machines with healthy food choices like low-fat milk, fruits, sugar-free and caffeine-free beverages and low-calorie snacks
Workout area, walking paths, playing fields, basketball hoop, or other exercise opportunities onsite or nearby
Cafeteria offers healthy foods including a salad bar with low-fat dressing
Natural light is used whenever possible; all lighting is appropriate and adequate
Heating and ventilation is adjustable, comfortable and healthful
No cigarette machines, ashtrays, or smoking areas onsite
Noise levels are safe and conducive to concentration
Work station furniture conforms to ergometric standards
Safety hazards have been eliminated
Lockers and showers are available for employees who work out before work or during breaks
Stairs are clean and well lit, convenient and pleasant to use
Familiarity can make it hard to evaluate a worksite. People get used to stressful conditions and forget that conditions ever bothered them. It may be useful to ask people who are unfamiliar with your workplace to walk through with you. Professional consultants can also help.
2. Proactive policies
One clear way to influence behavior is through policies and procedures. If parents are allowed flextime to attend to their children’s needs, they’ll be less stressed. If employees can apply unused sick days to planned vacation time, they’ll save them up instead of calling in sick to use them all.
Supportive corporate policies may include:
Seatbelt use required in company vehicles
Alcohol and drug policies are appropriate to the industry
Emergency procedures are developed, known, and practiced
Flexible work schedules allow employees to exercise, attend children’s school conferences, etc.
Nonsmoking policy is enforced
Excessive overtime is discouraged
Membership at a fitness facility is partially reimbursed
Shift workers are scheduled to allow adequate rest
Medical care coverage rewards good health
Absenteeism policy rewards employees who don’t use sick days
Employee assistance program is available to help employees with chemical dependencies, depression, family problems
Meaningful consequences are given for unsafe, unhealthy, prohibited behavior.
Your company may have a policy against alcohol use during work hours, but if everyone looks the other way when someone comes back from lunch smelling like beer, the culture is one that permits drinking at lunch — and one in which written policies can be safely ignored. Prohibited behaviors must be confronted promptly. Otherwise your policies become mere lip service instead of springboards to health.
3. Consistent recognition and rewards for success
Attention, praise and rewards are given for wellness achievements.
You can show you value wellness by celebrating your programs and those who’ve made lifestyle improvements in company newsletters, on bulletin boards, and at annual banquets, meetings, and celebrations. Incentives are a direct way to show appreciation, too.
Wellness mentors are sought and applauded, too. Employees who support others’ efforts to improve their health are noticed and appreciated. Peer modeling and mentoring classes can encourage those who enjoy helping others to step forward into a new role.
4. Managers model andsupport healthy behavior
Nothing could say “We encourage you to exercise often” better than a manager going on a bike ride during the lunch hour — or your supervisor sitting next to you in a weight management class. Wellness activities promote relaxed interaction between people from different departments and at different levels in the chain of command. That promotes relaxed communication and a feeling of solidarity that is pure gold.
Managers can also provide support for employees who are working on improving their health. It doesn’t take anything fancy — just a “good job” or “nice to see you at the gym” can put a glow on the cheeks of most of us.
Managers can also help by allowing employees the flexibility to attend wellness events.
5. Ongoing health promotion program
It's important to give employees the sense that the wellness program is a permanent and important part of the organization, not a business fad. That can start as soon as a new employee is hired.
New employees are oriented to the wellness program as one of the employee benefits. Information about the program should be presented by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable person who invites the new employee to participate.
The employees are familiar with the ongoing programs. The programs and wellness staff are well known in the company. Opportunities to participate are abundant and it’s easy to sign up.
A wide variety of awareness classes are offered. There are topics of interest for everyone.
Policy changes can work wonders
The 40% decrease in adult smoking since warnings first appeared on cigarette packs in 1965 has been a result of a dramatic cultural shift. We've moved from seeing smoking as a glamorous perk of adult life to the point that many smokers feel like social pariahs. For many, the impetus to quit started at work. When smokers could no longer light up at their workstations, they had to wait until break, weaning them a bit. Co-workers started speaking up about not wanting to breathe smoke. Smoking areas moved outside, then in some cases off-site. Awareness of the risks became widespread, distaste for smoke grew, and businesses, restaurants, airlines, hotels, and even some bars banned smoking. Business, government, and individuals changed their policies from allowing smoking to forbidding it.
How to foster employees’ sense that it is their wellness program
Health promotion programs work best when employees are involved in design, planning, promoting, delivering, and managing the program. That’s one reason we recommend a team approach to managing wellness programs. Some other ways to involve employees include:
Employees can give feedback about your environment via a culture audit. That's a questionnaire similar to an HRA, but one that measures how supportive the employees think your environment is. It can be used every couple of years to measure changes.
The wellness program can be presented as an employee benefit in the company brochure and recruitment materials.
Employees can help pay for the program, as in sharing the cost of joining a fitness facility with the company.
Wellness and HR staff must always protect the confidentiality of health data so employees trust that they can fill out HRA's and talk over health problems without risk to their jobs.
Employees can teach classes in skill areas, from sports to relaxation techniques to budgeting.
References
Michael P. O’Donnell, PD, MBA, MPH,
Design of Workplace Health Promotion Programs. Call (800) 783-9913 to order.
Allen, Judd, Culture Change Planner, available online at www.healthyculture.com or by calling (800) 862-8855.
Health Promotion: Sourcebook for Small Businesses published by the Wellness Councils of America and Canada. Call (402) 827-3590 to order.
Allen, Judd and Bellingham, Rick, “Building Supportive Cultural Environment,” Chapter 8 in Health promotion in the Workplace, 2nd Edition by Michael P. O’Donnell and Jeffrey S. Harris. Call (800) 783-9913 to order.
It's a big job
Creating an environment that truly supports health is a long-term project that requires real dedication to wellness values and a lot of sustained hard work. The support of top managers is essential. Your wellness team must understand and acknowledge the current environment and be able to envision a healthier one, and have the patience to build that vision a step at a time. It's worth the work. A positive environment can help employees to turn healthy choices into healthy habits.
What You’ll Learn In This Online Monograph
Wanted:
An environment that supports healthy lifestyles
How does it feel to walk into your workplace? Do people look happy? Is the place well lit and cheerful? Do you feel welcome, wanted and energized? Or do you feel a gloom come over you, and count the hours until you can leave?
The influence of the worksite environment on the health and wellness of employees is profound. First there is the physical look, feel, smell, and sounds of the place. Then you’re affected by the policies, like whether others are allowed to smoke around you. After awhile, more subtle factors begin to affect you. Do your attempts to adopt a healthier lifestyle get recognized at work, or are they sabotaged? Are your managers inspiring you by being healthy role models? Do you get regular opportunities to learn healthier behavior?
In a supportive environment, employees feel that the organization they work for provides them with encouragement, opportunity, and rewards for healthy lifestyles. And the spirit that results is highly contagious. Employees who feel cared for are naturally more loyal and productive.
Read on for five big ideas for transforming your workplace environment into one that truly supports the wellness of your employees and organization.
Five Big Ideas
1. Friendly facilities
When you enter a worksite, do you feel comfortable? Could you be happy working there? Is there enough light and clean air? Are there pleasant work areas, places to eat decent food, take a walk before lunch? Close your eyes. How does it smell? Sound? Do the workers have enough space? There’s no doubt that our physical environment affects us, from basic safety matters to subtle factors that can cause or reduce stress. Healthy environments often have these features:
Familiarity can make it hard to evaluate a worksite. People get used to stressful conditions and forget that conditions ever bothered them. It may be useful to ask people who are unfamiliar with your workplace to walk through with you. Professional consultants can also help.
2. Proactive policies
One clear way to influence behavior is through policies and procedures. If parents are allowed flextime to attend to their children’s needs, they’ll be less stressed. If employees can apply unused sick days to planned vacation time, they’ll save them up instead of calling in sick to use them all.
Supportive corporate policies may include:
Meaningful consequences are given for unsafe, unhealthy, prohibited behavior.
Your company may have a policy against alcohol use during work hours, but if everyone looks the other way when someone comes back from lunch smelling like beer, the culture is one that permits drinking at lunch — and one in which written policies can be safely ignored. Prohibited behaviors must be confronted promptly. Otherwise your policies become mere lip service instead of springboards to health.
3. Consistent recognition and rewards for success
Attention, praise and rewards are given for wellness achievements.
You can show you value wellness by celebrating your programs and those who’ve made lifestyle improvements in company newsletters, on bulletin boards, and at annual banquets, meetings, and celebrations. Incentives are a direct way to show appreciation, too.
Wellness mentors are sought and applauded, too. Employees who support others’ efforts to improve their health are noticed and appreciated. Peer modeling and mentoring classes can encourage those who enjoy helping others to step forward into a new role.
4. Managers model andsupport healthy behavior
Nothing could say “We encourage you to exercise often” better than a manager going on a bike ride during the lunch hour — or your supervisor sitting next to you in a weight management class. Wellness activities promote relaxed interaction between people from different departments and at different levels in the chain of command. That promotes relaxed communication and a feeling of solidarity that is pure gold.
Managers can also provide support for employees who are working on improving their health. It doesn’t take anything fancy — just a “good job” or “nice to see you at the gym” can put a glow on the cheeks of most of us.
Managers can also help by allowing employees the flexibility to attend wellness events.
5. Ongoing health promotion program
It's important to give employees the sense that the wellness program is a permanent and important part of the organization, not a business fad. That can start as soon as a new employee is hired.
New employees are oriented to the wellness program as one of the employee benefits. Information about the program should be presented by an enthusiastic and knowledgeable person who invites the new employee to participate.
The employees are familiar with the ongoing programs. The programs and wellness staff are well known in the company. Opportunities to participate are abundant and it’s easy to sign up.
A wide variety of awareness classes are offered. There are topics of interest for everyone.
Policy changes can work wonders
The 40% decrease in adult smoking since warnings first appeared on cigarette packs in 1965 has been a result of a dramatic cultural shift. We've moved from seeing smoking as a glamorous perk of adult life to the point that many smokers feel like social pariahs. For many, the impetus to quit started at work. When smokers could no longer light up at their workstations, they had to wait until break, weaning them a bit. Co-workers started speaking up about not wanting to breathe smoke. Smoking areas moved outside, then in some cases off-site. Awareness of the risks became widespread, distaste for smoke grew, and businesses, restaurants, airlines, hotels, and even some bars banned smoking. Business, government, and individuals changed their policies from allowing smoking to forbidding it.
How to foster employees’ sense that it is their wellness program
Health promotion programs work best when employees are involved in design, planning, promoting, delivering, and managing the program. That’s one reason we recommend a team approach to managing wellness programs. Some other ways to involve employees include:
References
Michael P. O’Donnell, PD, MBA, MPH,
Design of Workplace Health Promotion Programs. Call (800) 783-9913 to order.
Allen, Judd, Culture Change Planner, available online at www.healthyculture.com or by calling (800) 862-8855.
Health Promotion: Sourcebook for Small Businesses published by the Wellness Councils of America and Canada. Call (402) 827-3590 to order.
Allen, Judd and Bellingham, Rick, “Building Supportive Cultural Environment,” Chapter 8 in Health promotion in the Workplace, 2nd Edition by Michael P. O’Donnell and Jeffrey S. Harris. Call (800) 783-9913 to order.
