Employee Wellness

Employee Wellness

Lifestyle diseases are illnesses that arise from personally chosen health behaviors such as smoking, overeating, and lack of exercise. These diseases account for nearly half of all deaths in the U.S. and a large proportion of healthcare expenses. Lifestyle diseases have an adverse effect on organizations. Among the consequences are decreased productivity, greater absenteeism, higher healthcare insurance costs, and employee turnover. Yet lifestyle diseases can be reduced dramatically if people are encouraged to make healthier lifestyle choices. As such — to both save money and improve the lives of their employees — many organizations choose to develop employee wellness programs to assist their employees in making healthier lifestyle choices. Because I/O Psychologists are among the leading professionals with the expertise necessary to develop programs that positively impact human behavior, I/O Psychologists are routinely called on to create, modify, or assess the effectiveness of employee wellness programs. For the Unit 9 Assignment, you will be writing an employee wellness policy for a small restaurant chain. You read the source materials for this Assignment during Unit 8. They are: Chapter 24 in your textbook, “Organizational Consulting on Healthy Lifestyles,” and the article by Chenoweth (2011), “Promoting Employee Well-Being.” To prepare for this Assignment, you will also review the following wellness policies or guidelines for developing wellness policies, as examples of what you may include in the policy that you write. These examples are for review purposes only, and you should not use them as templates for your own Employee Wellness Plan. This Assignment requires you to create a unique Employee Wellness Plan. While your Assignment should reflect your own ideas and should be largely unique, you may find it necessary to incorporate ideas or other material from the examples you review. If you choose to do this, remember, “whenever information does not come out of your own head, you must cite it. This includes when you use someone’s words (quotations), ideas (paraphrases and summaries), and illustrations of ideas (graphics)” (Writing Center, n.d.). Sample Outline for Developing an Organizational Employee Wellness Plan State Personnel Manual, Worksite Wellness Policy Evaluating and synthesizing these materials, you are to develop an Employee Wellness Policy for a small restaurant chain, The Family Diner, to enhance the health status of their staff. You will have to work within budgetary parameters. Your policy should, at minimum: State the purpose and goals of the employee wellness program List and describe the components of the employee wellness program Include measurable objectives and outcomes Indicate who is responsible at each restaurant for implementing and monitoring the program Here is the information available about the restaurant chain: The chain has 11 restaurants scattered throughout your state.

The chain has 216 employees, which includes 11 managers and 11 assistant managers; the remaining staff are cooks, wait staff, and cleaning staff. The company offers healthcare insurance to its staff. About 1/2 have opted out of it because of the cost. This is a concern to the company. The company does not have a problem with absenteeism, but believes that staff may be coming to work ill because there are no sick days offered. About 1/3 of the staff are overweight and more than 70% are smokers. These are the main factors that have driven up the cost of the company’s healthcare insurance, and made it unaffordable to so many staff members. Staff turnover is low compared to industry standards, running about 20% per year. Thus, many of the staff members have been with The Family Diner for years. Nevertheless, it is difficult for the company to find committed, competent, people-friendly staff willing to accept the low wages typical of this kind of restaurant work. As such, this company would like to reduce employee turnover. This family-owned company cares about its employees and wants to see their health status, and even that of their families, improve. The company has a small profit margin, so that it can only set aside $20,000 a year to spend on the wellness program, split across all 11 restaurants. However, the company has other assets it can offer to the Employee Wellness Program, including: Floor space in the restaurants between the hours of 8 a.m.– 11a.m, before the restaurant opens Excellent relationships with the local community, including the local school, hospital, and police departments A slow work time between the hours of 2:30 p.m. – 4:00 p.m., when the company is willing to give staff 30 minute paid breaks, if appropriate, for them to participate in wellness activities