Wellness Activities to Build Off Your Biometric Screenings

Do you extend your employee wellness program beyond your biometric screening? Odds are, you get aggregate results from your screening vendor. If you don’t analyze and act on those results, you aren’t taking steps to improve the health of your employees. If you aren’t trying to improve the health of your employees, your wellness program isn’t going to have the effect you’d like.

So you might be wondering, “What can I do with aggregate results I get from my health screenings?” We’re glad you asked! There are a number of ways you can capitalize on the data in your aggregate report to help your employees make real strides towards a healthier future.

No matter what you decide to do to build off of your biometric screenings, it all starts in the same place—analyzing your aggregate results. Take a look at the data and try to spot any trends. Once you’ve noticed a few common threads among your employees, put together a wellness program specified to the issues your company is facing. Help to combat common problems by finding solutions you can promote right there in the office.

A big teller of health issues is bodyweight/BMI. Obesity can lead to a whole host of chronic and deadly diseases. If the trends suggest that your workforce is overweight or obese, you can help to reverse that trend by putting together a program with these TotalWellness Tips:

• Promote healthy eating throughout the office. This can be done with educational material, or providing healthy foods for your employees to taste.
• Encourage exercise. This can be done in so many ways! You could partner with a local gym to offer discounted membership, organize group exercise activities or organize your office to promote movement throughout the day.
• Host an in-office competition. This can take the form of a “biggest loser” challenge, or anything else creative you come up with!

Another common issue is hypertension, or high blood pressure. While general healthy eating and activity programs like we mentioned earlier can help with this health issue as well, there are some things you can do to specifically target high blood pressure:

• Reduce stress. Obviously working hard at your job can be stressful. Your wellness program can address this problem by trying to eliminate the stress in the workplace. You can do so by adding “zen” or relaxing areas, or even improving communication. Work with your employees to figure out what is stressing them out and develop a solution to the problem.
• Provide smoking cessation solutions. Smoking is a risk factor for a number of things, including hypertension. Mandating a smoking ban might increase stress for people who smoke, but there are positive ways to let them know you will support them as they kick the bad habit. Sharing success stories is just one positive option.

A third trend that can be found in aggregate wellness data is the issue of high cholesterol. Cholesterol is a natural substance found in the fats in your blood. A certain amount of cholesterol is normal. High cholesterol, however, can lead to issues with blood flow, and even heart disease. A few ways to address high cholesterol in your workforce are:

• Educate about heart health. You can jump on this bandwagon right away because February is American Heart Month. Consider putting together an info packet this February about how cholesterol levels can affect heart health, and what your employees can do about it.
• Tie this education in with any of the other suggestions we’ve made so far because—you guessed it—they’re all linked. Cholesterol is affected by your weight, waist circumference, smoking habits, diet and exercise.

As you can see, trends in your aggregate wellness program results can show you some serious health problems. These common issues are what can make your employees chronically ill, and less productive in the long run. Many of the health issues we’ve discussed are linked in multiple ways, showing us that a healthy lifestyle is really the best way to go.

It’s important to remember that everyone has some healthy building block they can use as a starting point. Work with your employees to figure out what is the best approach to jump off that block and really make an impact. Use these wellness activity ideas as a brainstorming tool to find your niche, and help your employees be as healthy as they can be.

What ideas do you have to take your corporate wellness program beyond your biometric screening?