(Fourth and final in a series. Offering employee incentives is one of the most important components in creating a successful employee wellness program in your company. Sentara Healthcare’s wellness plan, while partnering with Optima Health, is an incentive-based plan that both improves employee health and saves money for the company.) While many companies have had wellness pro­grams in place for years, ofte ...

Organizing your agenda, preparing meaningful topics, and practicing how you will deliver your notes are all important elements to leading office meetings. When it comes to presenting to a large or small group, we sometimes forget that what we don’t say is just as important as what we do say. Nonverbal communication is critical to being an effective presenter. Remember the old phrase “Silence is Golden?” Wel ...

(Third in a series. A personal health improvement plan that includes recommended health coaching classes to address specific health needs is yet another secret to a successful employee wellness program. Last week’s post discussed the importance of building a great communications strategy. Today’s post explores what health coaching can do for your company.) By Guest Blogger: Terrina Thomas, Director of Healt ...

Laughter has been documented to provide many benefits, including stress reduction. Since the workplace is one of the more stressful areas of life, humor is often interjected as a stress-reliever, morale booster and team builder. But it’s important to use humor cautiously, because it can also be offensive to others. Inappropriate humor can spark lawsuits and alienate people, leading to more stress instead of ...

(Second in a series: Last week’s post talked about the importance of using personal health assessments to begin a successful program.) As with most endeavors in business and in life, communication is key if employers are to deploy an effective wellness program. The real question is, what does effective communication look like in a wellness program? There are many ways to structure an effective communication ...

(First in a series) Every employer who begins a workplace wellness program wants to help employees with their health and reduce healthcare costs. Most plans include some combination of exercise, nutrition, stress management and smoking cessation. So what makes a wellness plan successful? There are a number of things that set apart a winning program. A few of those include incorporating personal health profi ...

Guest blogger: Terrina Thomas, Director of Health & Preventive Services, Optima Health I don’t know about you but right about 2:30 p.m. each day, I start to hear the faintest chant of my name coming from the downstairs of my building! No wait, maybe it is coming from my stomach and echoing from the vending machine downstairs. At any rate, if I haven’t remembered to bring a bag of grapes or granola bar f ...

Managing a healthy balance between your stress tolerance and everyday stressors can be tricky. It is a balancing act that can be extremely easy one day and downright difficult the next. Regardless of how you deal with stress, it is important to keep tabs on how well you are doing by remembering these tips: Manage your time Time management is important to help and find time for fun things you like to do. It’ ...

Nebraska doesn’t have anything over on Virginia. If they can do it, you can do it. In an article featured on www.JournalStar.com an employee with the Nebraska prison system walked more than 10 million steps over a one-year period as part of the state’s wellness program. He was one of 4,300 state employees who exceeded their program’s walking goal of 600,000 steps in one year. The total number of steps logge ...

There are many healthy reasons to eat more fruits and vegetables, and now there’s yet another – a lower risk of diabetes. According to an 11-year study conducted by Andrew J. Cooper, M.Phil., of Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, U.K., eating more vegetables and a greater variety of fruits and vegetables reduces the risk of type 2 diabetes. The study was published online recently in Diabetes Care, the jou ...