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7 Benchmarks

7 Benchmarks for Building Successful Wellness Programs

These 7 Benchmarks are an important part of building a results-oriented workplace wellness program. By using this information in your organization or with your clients, you can provide a credible framework which can be tailored toward organization specific values, mission, vision and goals for wellness. Organizations that are dedicated to the health of their employees are given a structure to help their organizations through the Well Workplace process.

Our toolkits combine webinars, expert interviews, sample templates, and more that will help guide you through WELCOA’s 7 Benchmark process. Building a credible framework can be difficult—we’re here to help—map out your results-oriented, worksite wellness program using these fundamental resources.

 
 
Building Successful Employee Wellness Programs
BENCHMARK 1

Committed and Aligned Leadership

 
 

Having leaders throughout the organization that are deeply committed to the wellness of employees and wellness in their own lives is an important first step to creating successful worksite wellness initiatives.

Benchmark 1 Toolkit
 
 
Building Successful Worksite Wellness Programs
BENCHMARK 2

Collaboration in Support of Wellness

 
 

Creating a formal or informal team that is dedicated to building and sustaining a successful worksite wellness initiative is an important step. This engages stakeholders at all levels and helps maintain a cooperative approach to worksite wellness initiatives.

Benchmark 2 Toolkit
 
 
 
Building Successful Employee Wellness Programs
BENCHMARK 3

Collecting Meaningful Data to Evolve a Wellness Strategy

 

Efforts to support employee wellness involve understanding employee populations and assessing the current state through confidential and secure data collection. Data collection should measure what matters most to both the organization and the employees.

Benchmark 3 Toolkit
 
 
Building Successful Worksite Wellness Programs
BENCHMARK 4

Crafting an
Operating Plan

 
 

Capturing an organization’s goals for wellness initiatives and documenting the details will serve as a roadmap to guide efforts and investments in workplace wellness. The wellness operating plan reflects the vision, values and purpose of an organization.

Benchmark 4 Toolkit
 
 
 
Building Successful Worksite Wellness Programs
BENCHMARK 5

Choosing Initiatives that Support the Whole Employee

 
 

Selecting appropriate health and wellness interventions based on data collected serves to enhance decision-making skills. It brings the right intervention to an organization in support of employees across the health continuum toward healthy and thriving lives.

Benchmark 5 Toolkit
 
 
Successful Worksite Wellness Programs
BENCHMARK 6

Cultivate Supportive Health Promoting Environments, Policies, and Practices

 

Supporting efforts toward healthy employees includes evaluating policies, practices and promotions to ensure the environment helps foster a successful wellness initiative. It is grounded in the core vision and purpose of the organization. Aim to align the wellness culture throughout the organization so there is consistency within resources, interventions and the experience at work.

Benchmark 6 Toolkit
 
 
 
Worksite Wellness Programs
BENCHMARK 7

Conduct Evaluation, Communicate, Celebrate, and Iterate

 
 

Each organization strives to develop an understanding of the impact of efforts to support employee wellness. Data collected during evaluation will determine how successful the approach has been and in what ways it can be improved. It also reflects how findings from the evaluation are communicated to ensure continuous improvement efforts in worksite wellness initiatives.

Benchmark 7 Toolkit
 
 
 
 

The 7 Benchmarks Evolution

 
 
The Well Workplace Checklist is an organization-facing assessment that measures your organization’s alignment with our 7 Benchmarks for designing strategic wellness interventions and supportive climates for wellness. In order to arrive at a set of questions that will help us understand your strengths and weaknesses and provide you with a plan of attack we got a little help from our friends (aka researchers, futurists and industry experts).

So how did we do it?

Since April of 2015, we’ve been putting our heads together with some of the best and brightest in the industry. This R&D involved award-winning company focus groups out of Wisconsin, professors from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and influencers from the Human Resources Institute, Edington Associates and Kaiser Permanente.

Meet the 7 Benchmarks Advisory Council

 
 
Jeremy Bray
 
Jeremy Bray, PhD
Professor and Department Chair, Economics, UNCG
“WELCOA’s new benchmarks reflect state of the art thinking around value on investment and will help to improve the health and wellness of employees around the nation.”
 
 
 
Daniel Bibeau
 
Daniel L. Bibeau, PhD
Department of Public Health Education, UNCG
“The new Benchmarks reflect and push changes in the field of worksite wellness, aiming us toward human purpose, potential, and wellbeing in the workplace to the benefit of employees and employers.”
 
 
 
Mike Perko
 
Mike Perko, PHD, MCHES, FAAHE
Department of Public Health Education, UNCG
“I consider the continued evolution of the 7 benchmarks part of the ongoing “WELCOA effect”, that being setting the standard for creating health for both people and place as the goal.”
 
 
 
GracieLee Weaver
 
GracieLee Weaver, MPH, CHES, CHC
Doctoral Candidate in Community Health Education, UNCG
“It has been exciting to see WELCOA’s benchmarks evolve to reflect the public health shift towards creating a culture of health within our workplaces and communities. These new benchmarks advocate for system-wide changes within organizations to support both the wellbeing and the autonomy of the employees.”
 
 
 
Jason Laurtisen
 
Jason Laurtisen
Co-Author, Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships
“Wellness is becoming a vital ingredient when striving to become an employer of choice. The new checklist will equip employers with the tools and insights to create a healthier, more engaging employee experience.”
 
 
 
Jennifer Pitts
 
Jennifer Pitts, PhD
Founder, Institute for Positive Organizational Health & Co-Founder, Edington Associates
“For too long, the value of wellness has been measured by a narrow set of success criteria – mostly focused on monetary return on investment. We incorporated a broader, more relevant set of measures and evaluation methods that better capture the full human and business value of a comprehensive approach to supporting employee wellness.”
 
 
 
Dee Edington
 
Dee Edington, PhD
Founder & Chairman, Edington Associates
 
 
Judd Allen
 
Judd Allen, PhD
President, Human Resources Institute
 
 
Rick Hecht
 
Rick Hecht
Director of Workforce Health Consulting, Kaiser Permanente