When staffing your Wellness program you need to consider whether to hire a wellness staff or contract with wellness professionals from outside your corporation.
Small and medium size worksites don’t generally have a wellness expert on staff. If your worksite is in this category, you will need to contract with providers outside your corporation.
Large companies have several choices. They can hire a staff solely for the Health Promotion Program, they can contract with outside wellness providers, or they are able to use a combination of internal staff and outside providers.
When picking a provider some key questions in the areas of staff, wellness program structure, process, and effectiveness need to be addressed. Each of these key questions is discussed in the following sections.
Health Promotion Company Staff
Health experts become wellness experts when they are trained in the full range of wellness activities. Health Promotion experts are generalists who come from a broad variety of backgrounds and schooling.
They may be nurses, dietitians, health educators, counselors, exercise physiologists, or have other backgrounds. But also to their main training, they know something about all wellness topics, including smoking, stress, exercise, and nutrition.
They also know how to engage and support individuals in making and sustaining health improvements and have good individuals skills.
Generally, wellness specialists at worksites fall into three broad categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.
o Health Promotion screeners introduce staff members to the Health Promotion program, take health measurements, collect health-related information, provide initial counseling, and help staff members define for themselves what they need and want in a health promotion program.
o Health Promotion counselors work with staff members after the screening to help them create and carry out a plan to reduce their risks and improve their health.
o Wellness instructors teach classes and minigroups on different health topics.
A health promotion program in a small corporation can be staffed by a single staff individuals who fills all three roles. Larger worksites will use different people to fill these roles.
When picking staff or picking among wellness businesses, ask the following questions -
o Do prospective workers have a range of health backgrounds that’ll provide appropriate specialistise in the topics to be addressed?
o Have prospective staff functioned well as wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and/or wellness instructors?
o Will this staff include people from the ethnic and racial backgrounds found in your worker population?
o Is each employee comfortable with the range of backgrounds found in your employee population, and able to communicate effectively with the various social and educational levels of your employees?
o Do employees have a warm, but professional, counseling style when interacting with employees?
