Workplace wellness

- mostly organized and studied in big business - somewhat unproven on best practices for small business, especially 10-20 people

- leaders must walk the talk and totally genuinely buyin

- many free resources

o Broker, tpa and specialized firms - Vendors can help - Small rewards work as incentives - Very difficult to get high participation rates - Need robust wellness committee – distributed through the company, turn over, both sexes (different health issues/perspectives), age segments - Works better for self-funded firm as they can reap the lowered costs and healthier workforce vs firm in small group market==Related Best Practices==

Resources

• WELCOA (The Wellness Council of America) in an employer association with 5,000+ members that has built an array of resources and best practices for its members over 25 years. There are both free and fee based resources.
• NOLO/SHRM –Healthy Employees, Healthy Business
• Worksite Wellness.Net
• Advancing Wellness has a website, newsletter and blog with many ideas, case studies and best practices for small organizations on wellness and specializes in consulting and wellness project management.
• FairHealth consumer resources
• CMS website
• Partnership for Prevention has many resources, including a detailed and careful study that ranks by health impact and cost effectiveness 25 clinical preventive services File:Priorities for americas health executive summary.pdf
• Case Studies by Partnership for Prevention of workplace wellness programs in many types of organizations and employers File:Leading by example - case study and strategies.pdf

Author

The author of this page is Terry Gardiner

Terry Gardiner is the founder and President of Silver Lining Seafoods and NorQuest Seafoods - a medium-size Alaska seafood processing company; and currently a Board member of the Anvil Corporation, an employee-owned company specializing in oil and gas engineering.

His co-operative experiences include member director of the Commercial Fishermen Co-operative association; creation of legislation for the Alaska Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank; and advisor to the US Dept of Health and Social Services for the state Health CO-OPs.

Terry served ten years as a member of the Alaska House of Representatives -several legislative committee chairmanships, Speaker of the House, Chairman of the Alaska Criminal Code Commission and board member on various state and federal boards and commissions.

His non-profit experiences include National Policy Director for the Small Business Majority in Washington DC; working with the Herndon Alliance and ForTerra.

Terry authored the leadership book, "Six-Word Lessons to Build Effective Leaders: 100 Lessons to Equip Your People to Create Winning Organizations".

For more check: Terry Gardiner Long bio