MOST Analysis

Mission Statement

Strategic Wellbeing Plan: most of us are used to creating strategic business or marketing plans. But when it comes to health and wellness, we don’t even think about applying our strategic thinking to assist us in creating a bespoke plan.

This module looks at the difference between corporate and individual wellness plans and why they’ve been treated differently for so long. This module will then show you how you can integrate the two to create a strong wellness platform for your organization.

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Objectives

01. Why You Want a Well Workplace – understand the components of wellness and why it’s critical to get them right in your workplace.
02. Corporate Wellness Programs – deep dive into the importance of developing and implementing a comprehensive and individualized health and wellbeing strategy to support employees.
03. Personal Wellness Programs – explore the role that personal wellness plans play, and how an organization can assist employees to develop a plan that works within the corporate wellness plan.
04. Strategic Wellness – understand the role that wellness plays within the strategic business plan and explore what can be achieved when a bespoke plan is championed from the top of the organization.
05. Personalization – explore what can be achieved when corporate wellness plans, personal plans and strategic plans come together and work towards the same goal.
06. Psychosocial Hazards – understand the changing landscape of workplace versus personal responsibility and look at the psychosocial hazards that are now identified within every workplace.
07. Wellness Leadership – understand the role that leadership plays in the wellbeing of an organization.
08. Meaningfulness of Work – deep dive into the wellness issues surrounding the meaningfulness of work and look at ways to increase meaning in every employee’s life.
09. Employee Morale – learn about the role that morale plays in a positive organizational environment and look at the ways that high morale can significantly impact the wellness of a workplace.
10. Employee Motivation – learn the impact that motivation has on the performance of a team and understand the role that motivation has on the day-to-day wellness of your workplace.
11. Employee Engagement – explore the critical role that engaged employees plays in the wellbeing of your workplace and learn about different ways you can engage your workforce in the wellness journey.
12. Investing in Health and Wellness – understand what it really takes to create and implement a bespoke wellness program for your organization.

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Strategies

01. Engage and elicit expectations for the program.
02. Understand the importance of strategic wellness planning and complete exercises that assist in embedding this knowledge.
03. Set aside time to study the information, tools and resources in the workshop.
04. Set aside time to meet with their team to discuss the elements of the workshop.
05. Identify, and make a list of, the key personnel needed to participate in health and wellness discussions.
06. Participants to complete the exercises as directed in each course manual.
07. Allocate time to consider the current effectiveness of any health and wellness program in place.
08. Without conducting any in-depth research, identify where strategy can play a role in adding depth and breadth to the existing health and wellness programs.
09. Identify elements where strategy can boost areas that are working well from existing health and wellness programs.
10. Identify the convincing rationale for creating a bespoke health and wellness program.
11. Create a clear narrative regarding the need to incorporate strategic elements in creating the framework for a health and wellness program.
12. Set aside time to identify, and write down, any additional commitment required to create a strategic plan for the health and wellness journey.

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Tasks

01. Set aside time to read through course manuals and make notes.
02. Allocate time to read the workshop’s preliminary analysis.
03. Identify the key personnel needed to create an effective health and wellness program.
04. Ensure relationships are built with key personnel through regular meetings, discussion and gathering ideas.
05. Schedule a meeting within the next 30 days for participants to meet and discuss workshop.
06. Participate in small groups during the workshop to share observations and reflections.
07. Determine and schedule the time needed to dedicate each workshop.
08. Demonstrate preparedness, commitment and personal presence at each workshop.
09. Prepare questions, seek feedback and create a plan for personal growth.
10. Each exercise in the workshop must be fully completed by the participants, and they must share the process and outcomes with the group.
11. Participants should identify and put into practice the adjustments presented throughout the workshop in order to finish their project.
12. Participants are asked to go over resources for ideas and choose at least one new tool from the list to use.

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Introduction

The second workshop in the Simplified Wellness Program – Strategic Wellbeing Plan – focuses on understanding what a well workplace is and why it needs to underpin the strategic goals and direction of the organization.

During this workshop, you’ll learn why you want a well workplace, how corporate and wellness plans differ, and where they need to come together. You’ll also learn about the importance of understanding the link between a well workplace and morale levels, motivation, psychosocial hazards and the engagement of your employees.

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History

The beginning of workplace wellness can be traced to the Italian physician Bernardini Ramazzini (1633–1714), who is credited with being among the first to write about the effects of work exposure on employees (occupational diseases) and to have been intrigued by the prospect of taking preventative measures to enhance employee wellbeing (Gainer, 2008). Due to the way work was reorganized and systematized during the Industrial Revolution, which began fifty years after Ramazzini’s passing, numerous new health issues and injuries emerged.

Welsh social reformer Robert Marcus Owen suggested a 10-hour workday in 1810 to better safeguard the welfare of laborers. The 8-hour workday was his goal by 1817, and he also came up with the term “eight hours labor, eight hours pleasure, eight hours repose” (Donnachie, 2000). The Ford Motor Company was one of the first businesses in the United States to broadly adopt Owen’s concept.

Charles Turner Thackrah is credited with penning the first recorded report of industrial workers’ health issues in 1832 (Gainer, 2008). As a result, Thackrah’s book is regarded as trailblazing in its effort to enhance employee wellbeing. The evil of employment is the accidental one of intemperance, according to Thackrah’s book (Thackrah, 1832, p. 18). This comment from Thackrah may have been suggesting that in these times, employers frequently ran their businesses without consideration for moderating or restricting the working circumstances for their employees.

Despite these significant accomplishments, workplace wellness was typically a secondary concern for businesses until the introduction of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) in the 1950s, when businesses started to provide wellness interventions primarily centered on alcoholism and mental health problems (Owens, 2006). True workplace wellness initiatives didn’t truly start to exist until the middle of the 1970s, claims Reardon (1998).

Aat this time, a perceived shift in financial responsibility for health care was from the government to the employer. Cost-cutting was the main driving force for the establishment of worksite wellness (Reardon, 1998). It was also connected to the initiatives of the worksite health promotion movement (WHP), which emerged in the late 1970s, and the occupational safety and health movement (OSH). The following factors have been attributed to the development of worksite health during this time:

• a broad cultural change that prioritized fitness
• insights from recent studies demonstrating the expense of employees’ bad behaviors
• newly established organizations that promote workplace health, like the Wellness Councils of America and the Washington Business Group on Health.

A further indication of the growing concern for employee health was the establishment of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974. To protect the people who are part of these plans, it created the minimal requirements for the majority of freely organized pension and health care plans in the private sector.

In 1979, Johnson & Johnson launched the Live for Life initiative, which went on to serve as the model for major corporate worksite wellness initiatives. The program included a questionnaire and a physical examination to gather data on each participant’s levels of exercise and body fat measures. Using this data, the business could then offer assistance with managing risk behaviors, such as stress management, diet and weight control.

When a new political government took office in the United States in 1980, the federal level’s focus on health promotion changed. However, occupational wellness initiatives started to appear in scholarly publications in the early 1980s. The majority of the publications at this period focused on how workers’ health and performance were affected by their efforts to be physically active. The Journal of Occupational Health began publishing articles in 1982 that examined how wellness programs for the workplace can lower absenteeism and other costs associated with illness, as well as a couple that talked about how fitness centers might perhaps draw in top talent.

Outside of EAPs, workplace wellness initiatives in the United States in the 1980s appear to have prioritized physical wellbeing over other facets of health. Companies began addressing psychological wellbeing issues as part of a more comprehensive workplace wellness strategy in the late 1980s. The OSH launched a program that focused on the mental health of employees in 1986. Its objective was to address the problem of diseases of mental health at work (mainly focused on stress-related illness). The National Institute of Mental Health then introduced another program in 1991 called Managing Depression in the Workplace.

The federal government proposed that 75% of firms with 50 or more employees give health promotion services as a benefit in the 1990s as part of the Healthy People 2000 initiative. Although there was little data to support the benefits of workplace wellness, managers who began promoting such programs more broadly began to hold the view that workplace health promotion benefited a firm by having a beneficial impact on employees. Wellness and health promotion initiatives during this time were typically split into three levels:

• Level 1 – focused on awareness (e.g. classes, posters, health fairs)
• Level 2 – focused on behavioral and lifestyle changes (programs that typically lasted up to 12 weeks and provided instruction to promote habit change).
• Level 3 – focused on the environment (these programs had no time limit and encouraged the work environment to support the changes through organizational structure and increased knowledge)

CAN’T READ CHART 2.14

According to the National Survey of Worksite Health Promotion Activities from 1994, 44% of businesses had facilities for exercise and encouraged participation in activities, and 30% of them conducted employee health risk assessments. The Pender Health Promotion Model started offering guidelines for creating occupational wellness programs in 1996. This model expanded on the physical aspect of health by adopting a holistic perspective on an individual. It provided businesses with a framework to work within and focused on changeable habits. A new edition of the initiative Healthy People 2000 – called Healthy People 2010 – was released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in 2000. Similar to its predecessor, the new program aimed to have a comprehensive health promotion plan in place at 75% of workplaces with 50 or more employees. This plan had five key components: health education, a supportive social and physical work environment, program integration into the administrative structure, related programs (such as assistance for workers), and screening programs.

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Current Position

Workplace wellness initiatives have exploded in popularity during the past fifteen years, and in particular during the COVID-19 pandemic years.

Some of these initiatives now use financial incentives to encourage workers to maintain good health instead of only offering health information, counselling, and exercise services.

Globally, governments have made exceptional progress towards ensuring the welfare of workers. Due to increased publicity, large corporations are paying more attention to the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of wellness programs, but there is little data available for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMBs).

Unfortunately, due to the smaller finances, different company goals, and distinct employee considerations, a major portion of the data from big-sized firms regarding workplace health cannot be extrapolated to SMBs. SMBs still face obstacles that prevent them from providing these programs on a large basis.

Offering wellness initiatives seems to be particularly difficult for small businesses. Less than 7% of small businesses, according to research, offer wellness initiatives (Carter, Gaskins, & Shaw, 2005).

Hughes, Patrick, Hannon, Harris, and Ghosh (2011) list a number of obstacles that small and midsize businesses face when implementing health promotion initiatives. The first is the extra expense these programs place on a business that may already be struggling financially. The usual rule is that mandatory health and safety standards take precedence over voluntary health promotion programs, and as a result, any suggestions for participative workplace wellness programs are abandoned.

Small businesses frequently lack a health and safety division, which in many bigger businesses typically serves as the catalyst for workplace wellness initiatives. Another issue is that small businesses may not provide the employee perks and health insurance that are frequently the driving forces behind preventative initiatives, and they can often lack awareness and comprehension of workplace wellness.

However, there are also other factors that can make it simpler to implement wellness programs in small businesses than it would be in large ones. These include fewer administrative requirements, which facilitate vendors promoting health; stronger ties between management and employees; simpler communication; and perhaps more empathy for employees who are viewed as “part of the family”.

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Future Outlook

The global workplace wellness market is estimated to produce revenue of $1,154,90 million by 2030, growing with a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 6.62% between 2022 and 2030, according to Inkwood Research. Workplace wellness includes any activity or organizational policy that promotes healthy behavior among employees and improves health outcomes.

This can involve a range of initiatives, such as company wellness competitions, on-site health fairs and education, free medical screenings, health coaching, weight loss, stress management, smoking cessation programs, wellness communique, on-site fitness facilities, health club memberships, on-site kitchens and healthy food options, and financial and other incentives that can be related back to health in some way. Over the past ten years, workplace wellness has developed to include the creation of a “culture of health” at work.

CAN’T READ CHART 2.15

The following are some major drivers of the worldwide market for workplace wellness:

• A benefit of cost
• Knowledge of chronic diseases
• Employees’ level of stress at work
• Employee stress at work has become a significant problem in the majority of firms worldwide.
• Anxiety, burnout, depression, and substance misuse are the results, which have a negative effect on mental health.

Principal restrainers of growth

Low involvement

Employee involvement in scheduled wellness activities has decreased in the majority of firms.

Their desire in participating is limited by factors such not fulfilling the necessary needs, concerns about privacy, and a lack of understanding regarding programs.

Additional funding is required for the company’s budget

The segmentation analysis based on end-user and service is included in the report’s coverage on the global workplace wellness market. To give a thorough overview of the market under study, these sectors are further divided into categories.

1. By end-user market:

• Large companies

– The largest end-user segment in the global workplace wellness market is large companies.
– Large firms frequently choose services like health risk assessment, diet and weight management, smoking cessation, and fitness programs for the wellbeing of their personnel.

• Mid-Size Businesses
• Small-Sized Businesses
• Public Sector NGO

2. The global workplace wellness market has been divided geographically into four key regions, including:

• North America consists of the USA and Canada.
• Europe is made up of the following countries: Germany, the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, the Nordic Countries
• Asia-Pacific includes Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Thailand.

– Over the projected years, Asia-Pacific is expected to grow at the fastest rate. The region is seeing an increase in the adoption of workplace wellbeing services due to factors like rising employee awareness of their mental and physical health as well as cost benefits.

• Middle East, Africa, and the rest of the world.

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Executive Summary

The second workshop in the Simplified Wellness Program – Strategic Wellbeing Plan, focuses on understanding what a well workplace is and why it needs to underpin the strategic goals and direction of the organization.

The baseline stress that each individual is exposed to in their everyday life is now significantly higher than ever before. Gone are the days when the major cause of stress in life is your workload; today individuals grapple with food, cleaning products, makeup and personal products, electronic devices, traffic, commute and travel to and from work, population explosion, air pollutants, insufficient sleep and secondary stress – before they even arrive at the office.

This plays a significant role in the health and wellbeing of every organization because your people are your greatest assets, and they’re often seriously unwell before they start to think about adding their job to their stress load.

Planning and creating bespoke solutions is the only way to navigate your organization through the wellbeing quagmire.

This workshop has 12 focus areas. Here’s what they cover:

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Chapter 1: Why You Want a Well Workplace

Healthy workplaces promote both emotional and physical wellbeing. They inspire everyone at work to do their best work since they are positive and productive. Companies that care about the mental health and wellness of their employees attract and retain top talent because they are great places to work. There is no denying the advantages of a mentally healthy workplace for both your staff and your bottom line.

One in five adults who are working age experience mental conditions like anxiety and sadness.

If your organization has more than ten employees, there is a significant chance that at least one or two team members, if not more, suffer from a mental health issue. In addition, one in six of us will experience mental illness symptoms including worry, trouble sleeping, and fatigue, which can limit our ability to function well at work.

This implies that nearly one in three workers in an organization is presently coping with a mental health issue.

Due to employee absences (sick days), decreased productivity and performance (presenteeism, or being at work but not working well), higher staff turnover rates, and related costs for recruitment and training, businesses globally lose more than US$2.5 trillion a year to mental health issues like depression and anxiety.

Understanding why it’s important to create a wellness first outlook will help you in every aspect of your life.

In this focus area you will learn what workplace wellness is, and why it’s so important to have a strategy in place that assists you in creating and maintaining a well workplace.

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Chapter 2: Corporate Wellness Programs

Just about every organization is struggling with stress and burnout.

In various regions of the world, ongoing research in this field is being conducted, some with an international focus and others with a focus on difficulties unique to particular nations. No matter the range of the focus, the results are frequently the same.

More than 40% of workers say they will start looking for a new job at the beginning of each year because they find that bad leadership at work is the most stressful component of their career. Furthermore, more than 40% of workers claim that they encounter a lot of “bad energy” at work and that they plan to look for a new job at the start of the year. More than half of all employees believe that job satisfaction is correlated with the rate of change and complexity at work.

These statistics reflect the epidemic we are currently facing on a worldwide scale, and unless businesses actively engage in creating a thorough and individualized health and wellness strategy to help their staff, these statistics will only get worse.

In this focus area you will learn what a corporate wellness program is, why you need one and what to consider when creating the corporate wellness solution that is perfect for your organization.

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Chapter 3: Personal Wellness Programs

A personal wellness plan aims to improve the general health of an individual in all spheres of their life.

It takes a multi-faceted approach to health.

Merriam-Webster defines wellness as the characteristic or state of being in excellent health, particularly as an actively pursued objective (lifestyles that promote wellness).

Mental, physical, spiritual, financial, professional, intellectual, and environmental health are all taken into account by a wellness plan. It requires an individual to evaluate every aspect of their life to establish goals and then proceed to developing a health plan.

In this focus area you’ll learn what a personal wellness plan is, why it’s important to have one and how to set action in motion to help you achieve the goals of the plan.

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Chapter 4: Strategic Wellness

In every employer/employee relationship, a set of expectations is formed. Over time, as the relationship grows and develops, expectations also grow but often lines of communication become blurred.

There’s always a weight that comes with carrying any expectation and the weight of expectations around health and wellness can be a significant burden to carry over time.

In 2019, the WHO redefined burnout in its International Classification of Diseases (ICD) and stated that it is an ‘Occupational Phenomenon’ (World Health Organization ICD-11, 2019), linked to stress at work, that can be defined as including depleted energy, exhaustion, negativity, cynicism and reduced productivity.

This seemed to point the finger squarely at organizations to ‘fix’ the growing stress and burnout issues being experienced around the globe. However, it also led to the conundrum of organizations needing to provide health and wellness solutions that were effective for each and every individual in their employ.

In this focus area you’ll learn what a strategic response to wellness is, why it’s important to have, what your strategy should cover, things to consider when creating your wellness strategy and how to ensure your employees are engaged with the wellness strategy.

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Chapter 5: Personalization

The thing to understand is that it doesn’t matter where you are starting from. Rather, what’s most important is to understand where you’re going, so you can create a simple and effective plan to get your there.

Around the globe, organizations and individuals are turning their focus to make health and wellness a priority.

The critical thing to get right at the start is the creation of a bespoke program that is as unique as the individuals in your organization, and that starts with providing tools and resources that every individual can tailor to their unique circumstances.

In this focus area you’ll learn how to turn your attention to the things you can do, rather than be constrained by the things that can’t be done. You’ll discover how to create simple and effective steps to build sustainable wellbeing, the importance of creating healthier people and workplaces and deep dive into the importance of personalizing your wellness plans at the employee level.

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Chapter 6: Psychosocial Hazards

To date there’s been much debate about whether there are any benefits to employers for providing wellness programs, or to employees for participating in them.

Workplace wellness programs have a longer history than most people know, with the first programs originating in the early 1900s when labor unions campaigned for worker’s rights and as business owners saw the value of having a healthy, rested workforce.

Since then, the workforce has shifted with the changing tides of society, and there has been a rapid and significant change in the way we work. Despite this, the focus on health and wellness hasn’t really changed in response.

In this focus area you’ll learn what psychosocial hazards are, what causes psychosocial hazards, how you can identify psychosocial hazards and ways you can manage them.

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Chapter 7: Wellness Leadership

There are many and varied styles and types of leadership, just as there are many different general conceptualizations of it.

It takes tenacity and perseverance to steer your organization through periods of constant change and adjustments. It takes effort and time to implement a wellbeing culture within your company, and it can be intimidating when you add it on top of the existing workload.

Conversely, delaying the creation and implementation of an organizational wellbeing program will be harmful in the long run, so it becomes important to work out how to take tiny, meaningful actions to improve wellbeing now so that they can add up to big, lasting change over the long-term.

In this focus area you’ll learn about intentional integration, the intersection of wellness and leadership, the importance of self-care, fostering a wellbeing culture and the effect of leadership behaviors on employee wellbeing in the workplace.

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Chapter 8: Meaningfulness of Work

The definition of ‘work’ has changed rapidly over the years and with that change has come a precarity of employment that didn’t need to be taken into consideration.

The advances in technology have expanded the boundaries of when and where work can be done and growing technological surveillance and human-machine interactions, along with globalization, new technologies and new organizing paradigms all play a role in creating dynamically complex, interconnected systems that employees often find it hard to feel their place within.

New forms of interorganizational collaboration and representative bodies are required as a result of growing demand for businesses to pay attention to their expanded social and environmental responsibilities. Included within this is the question about the way in which individuals within these shifting situations can satisfy their intrinsic desire for meaning in life and the ways in which the businesses can foster that meaningfulness so that employees can step beyond the monotony of a ‘Monday through Friday’ culture.

In this focus area you’ll look into the meaning of meaningfulness at work, what it is, why it’s important and how to determine what it is for your organization and your people.

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Chapter 9: Employee Morale

It’s widely acknowledged that workers with high morale view their jobs more favorably. They are motivated to work hard and achieve more as a team because they feel more confident in their roles.

In organizations where morale is high, employees tend to share a common goal and understand that teamwork is the greatest way to guarantee the long-term success of their business. After all, content employees want your business to succeed.

In this focus area you’ll learn what workplace morale is, why it’s important, morale factors to consider and tips for increasing morale in your workplace.

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Chapter 10: Employee Motivation

To feel good about their work and perform at their best, the majority of employees need some form of motivation. While some workers are driven by money, others are personally motivated by praise and awards. Irrespective of the motivator, the level of motivation an employee has at work will directly affect how productive they are.

Employees who are enthusiastic and motivated about their work will perform their duties to the be