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Briefcase Project: Final Proposal PowerPoint

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The punch recipe for increasing employee engagement, improving well-being, and building a culture of health was created based off Optum's Wellness in the Workplace Survey of key components that organizations who have achieved a culture of health include in their wellness program. In addition, key questions were focused on from Healthways addressing organizational culture and leadership values.
References:
Agee, M. (2014, July 3.) Is well-being an integral ingredient in your organization's cultural recipe? [Web log post].  Retrieved from http://www.healthways.com/blog/2014/07/is-well-being-an-integral-ingredient-in-your-organizations-cultural-recipe
Serxner, S., Sherrets, D., Kichlu, R., & Ratelis, E. (2016). The five keys to building a culture of health. Retrieved from https://www.optum.com/content/dam/optum3/optum/en/resources/white-papers/COH.pdf

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Employee Engagement Punch

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Culture of Health

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During this Briefcase project, I wished to find out what had the greatest influence over employee wellbeing especially when it came to involvement of leaders and managers. Even more was the discrepancy that I have to realize that is seen between what is believed to be seen as having support and what actually employees feel is happening. As I look back at what drove my interest in this concept was my experience in different organizations and the perception of managers are what they said was a supportive and caring environment of employees. Many times, in the beginning of my employment at various organizations the perception was given that the organization provided great employee benefits, the staff and leadership was supportive of work-life balance and showed appreciation of employees. However, I have often discovered that what management believed and what employees felt were two very different viewpoints. I have seen too often what lack of manager support of wellness can do to negatively impact employee wellbeing and negatively affect employee engagement at work where employee retention rates begin to increase dramatically. The work place culture becomes very poor, employee morale is very low, and employee stress levels increase and negatively impacts their physical health and wellbeing.

The information that was shared on my Padlet with my classmates unfortunately did not help in answering my driving question and I didn’t receive feedback from my classmates. The greatest feedback that I received was from my workplace in working through the steps of my project. My Briefcase Project evolved from focusing on a very broad concept of manager support culture of health and employee wellbeing to a much more specific question that became my current driving question.

If given the opportunity to do things differently, I would have worked more exclusively sooner within my organization to develop my Briefcase Project as it has a direct impact on assessing the membership basis. I feel that I would have realized that my original driving question was too broad of a topic for our organization and could have dug deeper into different avenues to explore.

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Final Brainstorming: Employee Wellbeing 

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Final Brainstorming: Employee Wellbeing 

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How does perception of mid-manager support of wellness affect overall employee well-being?

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Wellbeing at Work

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The HERO, Health and Well-Being Best Practices Scorecard in Collaboration with Mercer is a crucial tool in building a culture of health for an organization. The HERO Scorecard has a specific section that assesses the culture of health of an organization that will aid in adding value to a company and strengthen the culture of health for an organization. This tool is a best practice tool in the industry in measuring worksite wellness programs. “It’s a well-know, validated tool that allows employers to compare their health and well-being programs and policies against organizations nationwide,” ("The HERO health and well-being best practices scorecard in collaboration with Mercer", 2016, p. 1).

The HERO Scorecard focuses on how and why organizations need to continue to invest in health and well-being programs besides the traditional Return-on-Investment (ROI) focus. The HERO Scorecard addresses six key sections, one of them being constructing organizational support. In the HERO Scorecard, questions are asked about best practices in creating organizational support. This may range from “health, from leadership involvement and methods of communicating the company’s health values to specific tactics, such as company policies and the physical environment features that address stress management, physical activity, eating habits, safety, tobacco usage and work-life balance,” (HERO Scorecard Report, p, 31, 2016).  Companies that have a higher organizational support of health and well-being have a higher total HERO score but also receive higher average scores in the rest of the five sections of the scorecard. Thus, establishing a strong organizational support has a domino effect on the rest of the wellness initiatives. Aldana (2016) states “About 40% of the success of behavior change happens when we establish a supportive environment and when we receive peer support from others.” A workplace that has policies, managers, and a physical work environment that is set up to support the health and well-being of its’ employees is more likely to have success in nudging employees to make behavioral changes than a worksite wellness program that just offers a fitness center with no support from management or leadership example or policy to support employees using the fitness center.

The HERO Scorecard will provide a best practice tool of a series of questions that will be able to focus the attention on leadership support in creating a culture of health. In addition, my Briefcase project will supplement with questions from the CDC Worksite Scorecard and WELCOA’s Culture Audit. Using all three best-practice tool, a collection of the best validated questions will be able to be collected to focus in on addressing the driving question of the Briefcase project. Examining the tools that are available, there is not one specific tool that focuses only on organizational leadership support of culture of health therefore pooling questions from the best practices sections that address the leadership component will allow for a more focused study of this proposed topic.

References

Aldana. S. (2016, September 7). How the best worksite wellness programs change behavior [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.wellsteps.com/blog/2016/09/07/best-worksite-wellness-programs/

The HERO health and well-being best practices scorecard in collaboration with Mercer. (2016). Retrieved from http://hero-health.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/HERO-Scorecard-2016-Progress-Report_digitalREV.pdf

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September:
Poll and interpret data from WCWI members on Benchmark #1 "Committed and Aligned Leadership"

October:
Report data from 1st Benchmark. Poll and interpret data from Benchmark #2 "Collaboration in Support of Wellness"

November:
Report data from Benchmark #2, provide resources to WCWI members from Benchmark #1 on how to improve their wellness program.

December:
Poll and interpret data from Benchmark #3, "Collecting Meaningful Data to Evolve a Wellness Strategy". Provide resources to WCWI members from Benchmark #2 on how to improve their wellness program.

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WELCOA Health Culture Audit
Member Polls
Member survey responses
"Shared Values, Shared Results" by Dee W. Edington, Ph.D & Jennifer S. Pitts, Ph.D
"How to Build a Thriving Culture at Work: Featuring the 7 Points of Transformation" by Rosie Ward & Jon Robison

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Conducted at the Wellness Council of Wisconsin (WCWI)
1) Create a member Poll to assess member organizations on each WELCOA 7 Benchmark's Evolved.
2) Poll members
3) Interpret and evaluate data
4) Discuss and report data back to WCWI membership with WI progress on meeting the new WELCOA Benchmarks.
5) Develop member resources to support organizations in their alignment to the new Benchmarks from WELCOA.

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1) WCWI
2) WELCOA
3) Wills Tower Watson Survey
4) Optum Health Survey

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The culture of health needs to be seen everywhere in an organization by its employees. The mission and values of an organization drives the culture of a workplace. A culture of health goes beyond just the physical health of an employee by offering the basic compensation plan, a culture of health "plays an essential role in an organization's growth and prosperity and in its ability to attract and retain talented employees," (Wellsource, 2018). The culture of health can ultimately improve employee health, thus improve employee productivity, increase employee morale, and overall create a productive and healthy workforce that has company buy-in.

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Fonarow, G. C., Calitz, C., Arena, R., Baase, C., Isaac, F. W., Lloyd-Jones, D., ... & Volpp, K. G. (2015). Workplace wellness recognition for optimizing workplace health. Circulation, 131(20), e480-e497.
Wellsource. (2018). Population health matters: Creating a culture of health.  Wellsource.com Retrieved from https://go.wellsource.com/hubfs/White-Papers/Creating-a-Culture-of-Health.pdf?t=1528485953513&utm_source=hs_automation&utm_medium=email&utm_content=59650062&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--CEchrxdDYBmFvGl_tYzqFgSRLCcy10v_AMgtlFlmU5Ysq3fN_HNtLzo2fNgM9u9V0DFONOS6qIROoTiefYNrwAMgFkza8AWvP6NkX3KJ5ZQ2Hc4Q&_hsmi=59650062

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How does manager and leader support affect the culture of health in an organization?

"According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), a culture of health in the workplace requires that employee health and safety be valued, supported, and promoted through workplace health programs, policies, benefits, and environmental supports. It’s management communicating the following message to employees: “This is what we do here. Supporting employees in achieving their personal wellness goals is a part of who we are.”
(Fonarow et al,, 2015).