Well-organized health and wellness programs

Well-organized health and wellness programs have the capacity to improve employees’ generalized well-being. Consequently, the development of such initiatives is very common in organizations today, with HR professionals playing a key role in organizing and championing employee health and wellness.

Your assignment this week is to first watch the On-the-Job video of Stew Leonard’s health and wellness program that is located in the online Mind Tap content associated with this course. Watching this video will give you an excellent example of a company that has an exceptional health and wellness program. One of the reasons people want to work at Stew Leonard’s is its great benefits, but the company also emphasizes health and wellness with a variety of programs. For example, a healthcare center in the store is staffed by a registered nurse who answers employee questions. To control healthcare expenses, Stew Leonard’s invests in health and wellness, helps employees solve healthcare problems, and educates employees about healthcare costs. Because of the company’s efforts, 85% of its employees and their families are up to date on their physicals, an unusually high percentage. A wellness committee creates programs that encourage healthy activities. Stew Leonard’s has a director of safety and wellness, and each store has a safety committee that meets monthly. As an incentive, employees are rewarded with a pizza party if their store doesn’t have a safety incident in 30 days. When employees don’t have to worry about health and safety issues, they can focus on the customers.

After watching the video, identify another company that has an excellent health and wellness program and write a short, 2-page report on the company’s practices. You should focus specifically on the policies and approaches the company utilizes to enhance employee health and wellness.

To identify key information, look through reputable news outlets and business publications (online and/or print) for stories about your selected company’s health and wellness efforts. To better understand these approaches, you should be somewhat familiar with the company in terms of background, industry, operations, and/or culture.

The report should be approximately 2 single-spaced pages (12-point Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins; page count does not include title page or bibliography). At least 5 credible sources (much more is preferable) should be cited that provide support for your assessment. The file submitted should be in Microsoft Word format

Answer preview

Walmart provides different wellness events focused on cultivating a culture of health and wellness. These events also promote the screening of associates and their families for different healthcare conditions. The organization often hosts free wellness events in the stores focused on screening and educating associates on healthy living (Walmart, n.d.). Wellness events help employees feel healthy and fit, produce high-quality work, and cope with different work (Macdonald, 2005). The wellness events show a commitment to the wellness of the associates beyond the scope of the absence of disease. The primary objective of these programs is to prevent the associates from falling sick by enhancing their physical and mental well-being.

Managing the chronic conditions that would cause absenteeism is important for Walmart to maintain efficiency.  Experts in health comprehensively help the employees understand how to feel and look better. Walmart is committed to physical and psychological well-being and includes sessions of evaluation of key stressors at home and work.  Walmart recognizes that when employees are physically and psychologically fit, they can make appropriate decisions improving productivity. Raising awareness and education opportunities is one of the most effective approaches in wellness management (Sairanen, Matzanke, & Smeall, 2011). Walmart is also committed to supporting employees to complete degrees in health and wellness. The employees can earn degrees by paying $1 per day (Thomas, 2019, September 24). These opportunities not only help employees to fill vacancies in Walmart health-related jobs but also enhance the cultivation of the culture of health and wellness.

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Well-organized health and wellness programs