Selecting a Wellness Company.

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 don’t usually have a wellness specialist on staff. If your worksite is in this category, you’ll need to contract with providers outside your business.

Large businesses have a few 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 Company Staff

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

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

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

Normally, wellness experts at worksites fall into three broad 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 workers after the screening to help them create and carry out a plan to reduce their risks and improve their health.

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

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

When selecting  staff or selecting  among wellness corporations, 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 people  from the ethnic and racial backgrounds found in your worker 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 employees have a warm, but specialist, counseling style when interacting with employees?