Picking a Wellness Corporation.

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

Small and medium size worksites do not normally have a wellness professional on staff. If your worksite is in this category, you will need to contract with providers outside your business.

Large corporations have a few choices. They can hire a staff solely for the wellness program, they can contract with outside wellness providers, or they are able to 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 Company Staff

Health specialists become wellness specialists when they’re trained in the full range of wellness activities. Wellness specialists 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 further to their main training, they know something about all wellness topics, including tobacco use, 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 experts at worksites fall into three wide categories, wellness screeners, wellness counselors, and wellness instructors.

• Wellness screeners introduce staff members to the 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 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 company could be staffed by a single staff person who fills all three roles. Bigger worksites will use different people  to fill these roles.

When choosing  staff or choosing  among wellness businesses, ask the following questions –

• Do prospective staff members have a range of health backgrounds that will provide appropriate professionalise in the topics to be addressed?

• Have prospective staff members 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 worker comfortable with the range of backgrounds found in your worker population, and able to communicate effectively with the various social and educational levels of your employees?

• Do employees have a warm, but expert, counseling style when interacting with employees?