By understanding why worksite wellness programs are more successful when leadership support is strong, may be able to help impact other programs that could be struggling in this area. When looking at worksite wellness programs in organizations that are not successful, what are the reasons why they are not successful? Many of these failures involve poor leadership support with these new programs.

When an organization has  strong leadership support this can provide strong communication to deliver the message about the wellness initiative, resource allocation to help create policies and practices, creating a wellness team to delegate the importance of planning and implementation and strong leadership will be visible role models for the program.( welcoa.org, 2019) Support for other struggling organizations can come from investigating the question, why leadership support is vital to the success of worksite wellness programs?


References:
Karen Milner, Michael Greyling, Ron Goetzel, Roseanne Da Silva, Tracey Kolbe-Alexander, Deepak Patel, Craig Nossel, Megan Beckowski, The relationship between leadership support, workplace health promotion and employee wellbeing in South Africa, Health Promotion International, Volume 30, Issue 3, September 2015, Pages 514–522, https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/dat064

Mattke S, Liu H, Caloyeras J, et al. Workplace Wellness Programs Study: Final Report. Rand Health Q. 2013;3(2):7. Published 2013 Jun 1.

Wellness Council of America (2019) retrieved from https://www.welcoa.org/resources/profile-supportive-leader/

According to John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health “Experts also note that the best programs are those where senior managers see employee wellness as a central part of business operations, and not just a perk.” When utilizing this benchmark as a starting point with gaining senior level support, programs can develop more strength when they do so. When a wellness program can understand fully how important it is that senior level support is so crucial to the success of creating a culture of health in the workplace that is when they can become successful. When senior leadership is fully supportive of a program, there is full communication with practices, resources allocated for those practices, delegation of employees for the practices and utilizing personal health promotion practices.

Specifically looking at figure 2.  Leadership Roles from Dr. Allen and Dr. Hunnicut would be a great resource that wellness programs can utilize when trying to understand what senior level support should look like. Wellness programs could even turn this into a questionnaire to give out among their employees as well as leadership to get an understanding of how the leadership support is viewed in their program.

As someone who works in a health and wellness facility, I have seen how importance senior leadership support is to a thriving wellness program. I have also seen when total support is lacking, and how second level the program is to the facility. The culture of health within an organization will always start from the top, senior leadership. 

References:
Allen, J. and Hunnicutt, D. (n.d.). Fostering wellness leadership: A new model. Retreived from http://www.csun.edu/~alliance/Wellness_Coreteam/Absolute%20Advantage%20Magazine/Articles/Fostering%20Wellness%20Leadership.pdf

Institute for Health and Productivity Studies Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. (2015). From evidence to practice: Workplace wellness that works. Retrieved from https://www.transamericacenterforhealthstudies.org/docs/default-source/wellness-page/from-evidence-to-practice---workplace-wellness-that-works.pdf?sfvrsn=2

 Hunnicutt D, Leffelman B. WELCOA’s 7 benchmarks. In: Hunnicutt D, ed. WELCOA’s Absolute Advantage Magazine. Vol 6. Omaha, Neb: Wellness Councils of America; 2006:2–29.