Jasmin Jafferali is a wellness program coordinator and instructor and speaks here about many common issues in the workplace in employee health and wellbeing.

Wellness is a hot topic. The wellness industry is expected to be the next trillion-dollar industry within the next five years. With health care rising 10 percent each year for the past several years, many organizations are working to implement and develop wellness programs for their company. In fact, more than 50 percent of U.S. companies are operating corporate wellness programs today.

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for every 100 employees in this country:

• 27 have cardiovascular disease
• 24 have high blood pressure
• 50 or more have high cholesterol
• 26 are overweight by 20 percent or more
• 10 are heavy drinkers
• 59 do not get adequate exercise
• 44 suffer from stress

Wellness programs for the corporate world are an opportunity for every health club. There is a need for wellness because of the health care crisis we are battling each day. Health care in our country focuses more on treating the sick instead of preventing the disease through preventative care.

Wellness programs offer much more than just educating our clients. Programs offer an opportunity to change an unhealthy lifestyle to a healthy one. There are many ways you can incorporate wellness programs into your facility. You can offer a corporate wellness division, in which your health club offers employee wellness programs for organizations, or you can just simply add more wellness-based programs for your members.

However you choose to add wellness, each facility has to decide what wellness will mean in their organization. Being “well” is more than just going to the gym—it is getting a sports massage, going to a meditation class to relieve stress or attending a wellness seminar. It is giving members a place to relieve stress and get healthy through other means than just exercise.

Deciding what wellness will mean in your facility may be “going green” and offering recycling bins throughout your club, which would be one aspect of wellness. Once you decide what wellness will mean in your facility, it is important to have a team of people that is devoted completely to wellness. Once you have your team in place, management will have to determine its target audience before programming begins.

Target populations can be broken up into different categories:

• Special populations (prenatal, Baby Boomers, gender specific, etc.)
• Athletic programs (running/walking, triathlon and marathon training, etc.)
• Family programming (“Mommy and Me” classes, kids camps, self-defense classes, etc.)

You may even go as far as surveying your members to see what it is they are seeking in their health club. A good opportunity to do this is when they first join. However, you can also survey your members through e-mail and have it automatically calculated to see where the interest is. Having this information can be important for the team that is responsible for the wellness division of your organization. It will help them coordinate wellness programs more effectively and give them a good base to begin programming.

Surveying your staff members is crucial to an effective wellness solution that works to save you money on staff costs and improve the health of your team. What’s the point of having a wellness program that employees don’t find relevant to their needs? Creating an affordable solution to the corporate health of your staff while providing a personalised solution is a valuable key to our success.