Wellness Program Trends – Health and Wellness Coaching (The Guardian – 29/03/2016

Experts believe that personal, one-to-one health coaching is an important part of a successful results-oriented employee wellness program. Why? Because they help people cope with preventable health risks and manage health cost. Employees who are obese, chronically stressed, or who over-use tobacco are more likely to suffer from health conditions like heart disease and diabetes – which can impact their wellbeing and productivity as well as their employers healthcare costs.

Benefits of health and wellness coaching for your employees

Employees can benefit from health and wellness coaching in a variety of ways. Health and wellness coaching can help individuals decrease major health risks in their lives by changing high-risk behaviors.

Health coaching programs are designed to guide and motivate employees to make healthy lifestyle changes such as losing weight, stopping tobacco use, managing stress or chronic back pain, increasing physical activity and create balance in their lives. By addressing the range of physical, emotional, and environmental factors that influence peoples’ behavior, health coaching is tailored to an individual’s specific needs and challenges, and results in measurable, goal-oriented outcomes. Health and Wellness coaches assist with current health problems as well as preventing future health issues.

Coaching support is delivered through person-to-person or group consultation at the worksite, online, or over the phone by trained professional coaches, who are typically registered nurses, dieticians, health education specialists and/or mental health experts. Typically, the health coach initiates an outreach – a telephone interview to identify a participant’s level of risk and determine the amount of support they may need. Assuming the employee is ready and willing to develop a relationship with the coach and work with them to make positive lifestyle changes, the coach will customize a program and set a coaching schedule. The participant and coach then work side by side on any number of activities that might include setting goals, learning new skills, and understanding biometric data. Health coaching has shown to be an effective way to improve the company’s health culture and boost employee morale.

By encouraging positive behavior change, health coaching can lead to a healthier employee base and lower overall healthcare costs.

Benefits of Health and Wellness Coaching for the Company

The overall benefits of health and wellness coaching for a company are remarkable. Employee high-risk behavior such as obesity and tobacco use cost companies millions of dollars every year. These high-risk behaviors often cause preventable illness and keep employees from coming to work.

Health and Wellness Coaching guides, supports, hold clients accountable and ensures that they receive continued motivation in a judgment free environment to help them achieve their wellness goals and eliminate unhealthy behaviors in their lives.

By implementing wellness programs and using health and wellness coaching in their organizations, employers reduce the risk of preventable illness in their organizations. This improves the overall health of their employees, reduce healthcare and insurance costs, decrease absenteeism, and ultimately enhance performance and productivity.

When employees experience the benefits of higher levels health and wellness in their lives it causes improvement in job attitude, energy, and morale. Companies that utilize health and wellness coaching for their employees experience the benefits of higher productivity.