Corporate Wellness for many nutrition professionals is the next big endeavor to add to add as a service at their individual practice. But what is corporate wellness exactly?

Corporate wellness programs are programs sponsored or provided by employers for the benefit of their employees, to promote positivity, illness prevention, and a healthful lifestyle. Though the offerings and the exact structure of the program may vary by program, one of the biggest components of corporate wellness is nutrition. Today we are sharing a few pointers to help you establish your own corporate wellness program.

1. Show statistics and benefits of health change

Unlike one-on-one counseling, corporate wellness fosters a community of wellness. You have a much larger team working towards their individual health goals. You can play up that community to encourage communication and support among coworkers. One excellent way to start this is through implementing a dashboard. Show the team’s statistics around and let them watch as they everyone as a team moves towards their health goals. Including items such as health assessments and biometric screenings where you can regularly track improvements. According to corporate wellness expert, Caroline Susie, “Many outcomes based programs can show data improvements not only with biometric data, but with other claims such as ER visits, lower hospital admission rates, better management of chronic diseases, and lower pharmacy costs.”

2. Make your solution scalable

While one-on-one counseling sessions might be your passion, that may not be the best solution for a large-scale corporate wellness program, especially for some of the larger companies. This means that you need to develop a scalable solution that will be able to reach every person looking to participate. This may mean giving educational sessions to large groups or starting a lunch-and-learn program.

One way to reach all of your employees and schedule time for everyone to get involved easily is through Healthie!

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3. Bring in the “team effort”

With a corporate wellness program, you want to create opportunities for everyone to get involved. Offering programs that will bring larger groups of people together can create a positive team environment, where they not only act as each other’s support system, but also are more engaged with their workplace. We’ve seen corporate wellness programs that offer items such as group yoga or meditation sessions to keep participation up and reach more individuals.

You can also reach out to smaller businesses to include them in retreats or programs you may be offering. Remember to reach out to startups (especially in the healthcare space!) while networking, as these companies tend to be highly innovative.

4. Initiate some friendly competition.

Get people involved by trying in a  little friendly competition! Set competitions that everyone can get involved in and match different departments against each other to encourage them to one-up each other. Working with a much larger corporation? Why not set up a March Madness style bracket to have different teams across the board face off. This way, everyone can get in on the fun and all efforts are required to win.

5. Give out incentive prizes to motivate.

Everyone loves a cash prize. Offering a dollar amount on a prize can be especially effective in a widespread team competition. Otherwise, smaller prizes such as grocery store gift cards, raffles for exercise equipment can also go a long way in increasing participation and drawing in a lot of excitement.