The Importance of Workplace Wellness Programs
- Key components are, Rewarding Health Improvement, Awareness Creation, Encouraging Participation, and Increasing Engagement.
As the value of workplace wellness programs is mainly depending upon Employee accountability, therefore every organisation needs to create culture of Being Healthy by promoting Diverse Functional representations, Positive attitude, and commitment to consistent and on time reporting, interaction with Non-Participants.
If the organization will avoid discrimination and allow their employees to keep their medical information confidential then it will create awareness in employees. Conducting Health encouraging Events and promoting Physical activity on routine basis will make healthy selection easy for people who are working there.
- Building of Gym area, Cafeteria, and library in organization premises itself will encourage employees.
- Providing Clean walking areas and staircases
- Encouraging Breaks and activity throughout the whole day
- While calling meetings, food or snacks should be included during meetings
- Instead of individual Birthday, celebrations there can be monthly celebrations.
- Providing technology to promote engagement is appreciable as Fitness trackers should be used over smart phones while working out.
- For activity logs, social sharing, fruit veggie and calories tracker, weight log, food log and other health related tasks leveraging web and digital resources is good.
- Offering Strategic Incentives to promote healthy events and workshops can be influential. Because incentives can inspire anyone to begin workplace wellness journey
- Rewarding employees in impartial and consistently for their good performance
Resolving the mental health problems in an Organization is the key step in developing an Organization mental health policy.
An Organization mental health policy generally consists of a vision statement, a statement of the principles and values on which basis the policy has been created, and a set of objects.
Once the cognitive health policy has been developed, strategies to execute the policy are to be prepared.
A cognitive health policy Implementation and evaluation mainly consists of evaluating the outcomes, generating support, training, coordinating implementation, and establishing demonstration programs.
The EAP can be defined as professional workplace-established program developed to support in documentation and undertaking of professional and unprofessional issues of the employees lessened by personal troubles including, health, family, financial, drug, emotional, alcohol, marital legal and other personal concerns which can undesirably disturb employee job efficiency. EAPs provide short-term advising, education programs, and referral services as well as promotion .These services are delivered in a confidential environment. EAP referrals are an agency-paid benefit provided to person and his/her dependents to manage their daily duties and life events better.
Cultural factors that should be considered are Religious differences, Distrust of health care services, Faith in alternative medicines, Personal experiences, Fear of the unknown (Care Search, 2018).
The Canadian Psychiatric Association (referred as CPA) supports the policies and laws, which gives protection to the rights, privileges of all humans irrespective of their gender expression and sexual orientation. The CPA also opposes any private and public discrimination on basis of sexual orientation or gender specific (Veltman & Chaimowitz, 2014).
Benefits of Employee Assistance Programs (Joseph, 2018):
- Mental Health Wellness Programs can give their employees an ability to cope up with personal issues that can affect job performance, because work-related pressure also troubles outside the office. Employees have cellular phone access to expert counsellors 24 hours a day if necessary.
- Confidential: Employees will appreciate the fact that they are having resource that they can use to discuss professional issues confidentially.
- Immediate assistance: Employees normally provided with immediate assistance, there is no need to pass the time to seek assistance.
- Personal Issues: An EAP or mental health wellness program can also help employees dealing with issues outside the office premises.
- Employer Benefits: Employee assistance programs can provide reimbursement to its Employees.
In Development team of wellness program of our company, supervisors and senior managers are to guide employees, because mangers or supervisors can converse with Employee assistance program’s staff about how and when to bring up an employee to the EAP program.
- To announce Participation-based Incentives, Progress-based incentives, Outcomes-based incentives to targeted audience of organization itself.
- To achieve a health standard fulfilling a certain health outcome of World health organization
- To make significant progress toward specific health goal of organization
- To execute the Organization Health Assessment covering Depression, Anxiety, Stress, Emotional instability
- Focus on awareness, active participation, or recognition and rewards.
- Connecting Health Care with Employees (Physicians, Doctors, EAP)
- Physical Health
- To identify whether all Employees are “happy?” or not
- Financial Health
- Emotional and Mental Health
- Social / Community Health
The Primary audience for mental health and wellness module of our company comprises our employer’s team, employees, mental health professionals, human resources professionals, and other organization employees. However, the Centre of attention of the module will be all Employees of our company.
- Discussion on Work-related Risk factors for health, Creating a Healthy Workplace, Supporting People with mental disorders at work, Discussion and Execution of Global Plan WHO (World Health Organization) on Worker’s Health (2008-2017) and Mental Health Action Plan asIt consist of regulation on the development of Cognitive health policies, their plans, and programmes at countrywide.
- Mental Health Awareness Assignment : In this type of activity a project is assigned to each three or four-person team to do a task of learning about any disorder (Example: Generalized Anxiety Disorder) from the employee viewpoint, and from the viewpoint of medical experts.
- Mental Health Awareness Quiz
- STOP Stigma Survey(Positive Psychology Program, 2018).
EAP Plans are usually paid by the Employer for resolving personal problems of employees that may be badly disturbing the employee’s performance. Yes, it is one time program in a year which offer medical benefits such as treatment and counselling, when it required by employees.
When designing any Employee assistance mental health wellness program, we will make professional guidelines based on our organization’s exclusive mission, operation, and culture. It will also contain a coordinated set of policies, procedures, and events.
This Mental health wellness program will be evaluating by calculating the overall effectiveness of counselling services from measuring clinical and professional outcomes. Effectiveness will also be measured by absentee, presence and employee commitment at work place.
References
Gabriel, P., & Liimatainen, M. (2000). Mental health in the workplace. Geneva: International Labour Organization.
Bailey, M. (2017, 03 29). 8 Key Components Every Workplace Wellness Operating Plan Should Have. Retrieved from The bailey group: https://mbaileygroup.com/blog/8-components-workplace-wellness-operating-plan/
Care Search. (2018). NSW Paediatric Palliative. Retrieved from https://www.caresearch.com.au/caresearch/tabid/4027/Default.aspx
Cover Tek. (2018). 5 Essential Components of a 21st Century Corporate Wellness Program. Retrieved from Cover Tek: https://www.cover-tek.com/5-components-of-modern-wellness-programs/
Elkin , A., & Rosch, P. (1990). Promoting mental health at the workplace: the prevention side of stress management. Occupational medicine (Philadelphia, Pa.), 739-754.
Halder, S., & Mahato, A. (2012). Mental Health at Work Place. International Journal of Occupational Safety and Health, 2-6.
Harder, H. G., Rash, J., & Wagner, S. (2016). In Mental Illness in the Workplace: Psychological Disability Management. Oxon: Routledge.
Joseph, C. (2018). What Are the Benefits of Employee Assistance Programs? Retrieved from Chron: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/benefits-employee-assistance-programs-2803.html
Kemp, D. R. (1994). In Mental Health in the Workplace: An Employer’s and Manager’s Guide. London: Greenwood Publishing group.
Positive Psychology Program. (2018). 28 Mental Health Activities, Worksheets & Books for Adults & Students. Retrieved from https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/mental-health-activities-worksheets-books/
Thomas, J., & Hersen, M. (2002). In Handbook of Mental Health in the Workplace. california: Sage.
Veltman, A., & Chaimowitz, G. (2014). Mental Health Care for People Who Identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and (or) Queer. Can J Psychiatry, 1-7.