Wellness Days Stop and Think! |
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| By: marcashton | ||||
- Mental and Physical Fatigue - Absenteeism / Pre-senteeism - Requirements for the following year - Staff turnover - General staff morale One of the ways that Corporate South Africa seems to be addressing this is by throwing money at the problem and outsourcing Event Management companies to product "Annual Wellness Days". The principle is all good and well but it produces an unsustainable, discontinuous Wellness strategy overall for 2 reasons: 1. A balanced Wellness campaign is not going to be addressed by putting on day of fun and games for your staff intermingled with some health presentation. In all honesty - your money is better spent bringing in a consultant to sit down with your HR and Training departments to discuss the annual strategy and to draw up a plan - than it is to throw a whole lot of money at single day. If your management have no strategy or plan - there is no way they can communicate and MEASURE how effective their campaign has been 2. As an example, consider the following - you decide to hold an HIV Awareness day complete with a Counselling and Testing Centre. Your employees are informed about the day and start talking amongst themselves asking things like: "If I don't do the test, will I lose my job?" "What happens if I do the test and it comes back positive?" "As the HR Manager for these staff members, what do I do once the Wellness day is over and the experts have left?!" Instead of creating a positive, educational day you have created an environment of distrust and uncertainty. Having said all of the above a Wellness CAN be a great deal fun, motivational and educational for all staff. Aspects such as: Short Motivational presentations by health, nutrition and sports experts can be great for teambuilding and presenting basic health concepts in a non-threatening, fun environment. Fun physical presentations over lunch hours educating staff around ergonomics, exercise awareness during work hours, Sleep Regulation and Mental Health promotion Management strategies and brain-storming sessions for dealing with a sustainable Health Risk Management within an organisation. Conclusion: Wellness Days can be and ARE a great deal of fun. However - before rushing into them it probably helps to take a step back and assess what your goals are before trying to implement an unsustainable strategy. |
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| Article Source: http://business2u.co.za | ||||
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