Picking a Wellness Corporation.

When staffing your wellness program you need to consider whether to hire a wellness staff or contract with wellness specialists from outside your organization.

Small and medium size worksites do not typically have a wellness professional on staff. When your worksite is in this category, you’ll need to contract with providers outside your corporation.

Large companies have several choices. They can hire a staff solely for the wellness program, they can contract with outside wellness providers, or they can use a combination of internal staff and outside providers.

When choosing  a provider some key questions in the areas of staff, program structure, process, and effectiveness need to be addressed. Each of these key questions is discussed in the following sections.

Wellness Business Staff

Health professionals become wellness professionals when they are trained in the full range of wellness activities. Wellness professionals are generalists who come from a broad variety of backgrounds and schooling.

They might 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 use of tobacco, stress, exercise, and nutrition.

They also know how to engage and support people  in making and sustaining health improvements and have good people  skills.

Normally, wellness professionals at worksites fall into three wide categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.

• Wellness screeners introduce workers to the program, take health measurements, collect health-related information, provide initial counseling, and help workers define for themselves what they need and want in a wellness program.

• Wellness 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.

• Wellness instructors teach courses and minigroups on different health topics.

A wellness program in a small corporation could be staffed by a single staff person who fills all three roles. Larger worksites will use different individuals  to fill these roles.

When selecting  staff or selecting  among wellness companies, ask the following questions –

• Do prospective employees have a range of health backgrounds that’ll provide appropriate specialistise in the topics to be addressed?

• Have prospective workers functioned well as wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and/or wellness instructors?

• Will this staff include individuals  from the racial and ethnic backgrounds found in your staff member population?

• is each staff member comfortable with the range of backgrounds found in your staff member population, and able to communicate effectively with the various social and educational levels of your employees?

• Do staff members have a warm, but specialist, counseling style when interacting with employees?