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Some of the components you’ll want to consider including in your organization’s healthy weight program are a statement of purpose; demographic data; pharmacy, medical and disability utilization data; metrics and evaluation methods; communication objectives; matched activities and key messages. The information below will help your workgroup create a comprehensive healthy weight program.
Statement of purpose
The statement of purpose is the foundation of your healthy weight program; it acknowledges the scope of the problem, commits to supporting the workforce and expresses the core objectives of the program.
Here is an example of a statement of purpose:
“To encourage, support and make available resources that assist employees and their families in making healthy weight lifestyle changes for improved physical and mental health.”
Demographic data
Your plan ought to acknowledge the unique demographics of your workforce as these factors can affect the types and method of communication and activities with the workforce. Demographics to consider include:
- male/female ratio
- average age
- workplace diversity
- educational levels
- population type
- urban versus rural location
Pharmacy, medical and disability utilization data
You will want to gather relevant data on the overall utilization of pharmacy, medical and disability benefits as well as the prevalence of diagnoses for conditions associated with overweight and obesity such as diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, high blood cholesterol, osteoarthritis and depression.
This information will guide your decisions about strategy, objectives, activities and tactics.
Establishing program standards
Based upon your organization’s demographic and utilization data, you may want to establish program standards and measurement methods for evaluating the effectiveness of the program. If you do establish program standards, you might consider measuring them by monitoring:
- Rates of new cases for overweight and obesity-related medical conditions
- Rates of new high-cost treatments
- Rates of absences and new disability claims
- Employee satisfaction with Healthy Lifestyles/Healthy Weight initiatives
- Number of employees participating in Healthy Lifestyles/Healthy Weight programs
- Number of pounds lost by participating employees
Reporting the results of this evaluation can help maintain senior management support for the program.
Communication objectives
As part of the overall effort to mitigate the health risk of overweight and obesity and to provide information and activities to meet employees in their stage of behavior change, you may consider communication objectives that:
- Promote awareness of the health benefits of healthy weight and exercise; make facts about the medical conditions, causes, psychological and social effects associated with overweight and obesity available; identify and sponsor specific activities targeted to encourage healthy weight and exercise.
- Reduce the stigma, guilt and shame associated with overweight and obesity.
- Expand awareness of community-based physical activity and leisure-time activities.
- Promote behavior change through education about stress management and healthy well-being and the stress/weight connection; this information will help employees manage the psychological factors associated with overweight and obesity.
- Promote activities at the workplace that encourage and reward healthy weight goal attainment.
Key messages
To support the objectives of raising awareness, here are some key messages to include in your communications:
- Making even a moderate change in eating and physical activity can have a significant improvement on your health and well-being.
- Expect setbacks and forgive yourself—making a change is a process, not an event.
- A balanced diet, regular physical activity and stress relief can help you stay healthy for life.
Consistent and frequent communication will maximize the impact of the message. Keep in mind some key communication principles as you design your plan:
- Frequency —People need to hear messages repeatedly in order to process them, and eventually adopt them. Therefore, consider embedding messages that relate to this healthy weight initiative in other communication campaigns as relevant. For example, “A balanced diet, regular physical activity and stress relief can help you stay healthy for life” is relevant whether the topic is managing change, stress management or a health fair announcement.
- Consistency —Try to keep the communication focused on supporting the key messages rather than introducing new concepts. Keep the language consistent.
- Know your audience —How can you best reach your diverse workforce? Do they prefer written or oral communications? Print or electronic? Live or video-based? What is the functional reading level of the employee population? Are there cultural issues or perspectives to consider? Ideally, a strategy is created for your general population and then specific tactics and activities are designed for supervisors and other targeted audiences.
- Consider context —What else is going on in the organization? Are there significant changes underway? Some people may find making changes to their lifestyle in uncertain times more difficult.
- Try different approaches —Keep in mind that individuals learn 10 percent of what they read, 20 percent of what they hear, 30 percent of what they see, 50 percent of what they see and hear, 70 percent of what they talk over with others, and 80 percent of what they use and do in day-to-day life. As with all behavior change, multidimensional interventions will likely have the best results.
- Make a long-term commitment —Repeat interventions will reinforce the commitment of the organization and the original prevention goals.
Tactics
With this strong foundation of commitment, data, clear objectives and a communication strategy, you can now devise tactics that support achievement of your objectives. Please review the related documents, which describe a list of no-cost and low-cost activities and tools provided by ValueOptions to support your organization’s healthy weight initiative.
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