Tip-top from the top down
HR and Training Journal 6. October 2009.
Dorian Dugmore, President and Founder of Wellness International, discusses the benefits of setting a good example in organisational health and wellbeing leadership.
Healthcare systems throughout Europe are feeling the strain due to the ever-increasing demands made upon them to provide treatment solutions for many lifestyle-related diseases. The corporate setting provides an ideal location for delivering preventative strategies to cater for the ever increasing burden that cardiovascular illness and other lifestyle-related diseases place upon society.
For corporate wellness to be successful, it is essential that it becomes an integral part of a company’s mission statement that links looking after its people together with its core business. The focus of such a programme should be to provide a ‘seamless care’ model that gives employees and clients a menu of interventions depending on their health profile. These can range from fitness programmes to guidelines for maintaining optimum health with no discernible lifestyle risk, to dealing with those at risk and following up on those individuals that may have already experienced a serious health crisis. An example of the latter could be a cardiovascular event that mayor may not have required surgery.
We then have to be innovative in delivering the above process wrapped within an attractive corporate wellness package.
Incentives that can motivate an employee to take a serious interest in their health through a company’s wellness programme can be rewarded. Capturing the families of employees through innovative cost-effective programmes offer exciting potentials for the future can aid employee retention. Creating a new ‘wellness professional’ will become a growing need for the future. We have seen an unprecedented success in the growth of personal trainers; why not see a similar explosion in the growth of ‘wellness professionals; who have the skill set to bridge the gap between healthcare professionals, personal trainers and those working in various fields within clinical medicine.
For success to be achieved, it has to be driven from the top down, where the chief executive and senior management are visibly seen to support and buy into the wellness concept. So many corporate programmes have failed in the past because a token gesture of support has been given by senior management without any real commitment. What do we mean by such commitment? Leading by example, as Jeffrey Fox says in his book ‘How To Become CEO’; 90% of chief executives are out of shape. So an in shape, healthy and fit CEO will offer inspiration for others to follow. During employee appraisals, include a wellness component so that employees are encouraged to know their health numbers together with their business numbers. Also, create champions within the workforce who have risen to the wellness challenge and you have the beginnings of the recipe that will build corporate wellness success:
‘The corporate setting provides an ideal location for delivering preventative strategies to cater for the ever increasing burden that cardiovascular illness and other lifestyle-related diseases place upon society’
Remember – an ounce of prevention is worth a ton of treatment.
Dr Dorian Dugmore is currently on the nucleus boards for the prevention of heart disease and sport cardiology belonging to the European Association for Cardiovascular Prevention and Rehabilitation. Dugmore is also a regular speaker on the topic of executive health and corporate wellness.
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