Cultivating a Corporate Culture of Wellness

Sowing the Seeds of Behavior Change

Even in this tenuous economy, employees are increasingly seeking out organizations that embrace and support a healthy lifestyle. And likewise, such employers are attracting and retaining the health-conscious candidates they prefer to employ. Actively cultivating a culture of wellness, these organizations’ leaders understand that the environment in which we are immersed all day, every day exerts a significant effect on the choices we make around our health. Choices like what to eat, how active to be, how to manage stress…choices with profound and far-reaching effects on our health. Employees deserve, and are starting to demand, a truly healthy worksite.

Consider:

• Approximately 40% of all deaths in the United States are premature and largely preventable.

• The combination of physical inactivity and poor nutrition rank as the second leading cause of preventable death, right behind smoking.

• Lifestyle-related chronic diseases – heart disease, cancer, diabetes – are the leading causes of disability in this country.

• Stress experts estimate that between 75 to 90% of all doctor visits are for stress-related conditions.

Culture is the fertile soil in which positive health behavior change takes root and grows. What can you do TODAY so that at your worksite, the healthy choice is also the easy choice?

Could you…

• provide employees with pedometers?

• offer reimbursement for off-site fitness facilities?

• reimburse for tobacco cessation courses?

• provide healthy food options in the vending machines?

• ensure that all workstations are ergonomically sound?

• incorporate stretch breaks during the day?

• offer stress management and work/life balance training and support?

Start small, go slow, till the soil. Good things will bloom.

The Author