Wellness Management in the Workplace: Rethinking Change

1. Wellness Management in the Workplace: Rethinking Change Jane Ellery, Ph.D.Assistant ProfessorAssociate Director, Wellness Management • jellery@bsu.edu • http://bsu.idwellness.org (graduate student blog) Fisher Institute for Wellness and Gerontology

2. What is Wellness? How does your company view human assets? How does your wellness plan fit within your company’s mission? What is important to your employees? What are your employees willing to change? How can you help make the “healthiest choice” the “easiest choice.”

3. Where are we now? Occupational Health and Safety It’s a full-time job to think about all of this! Employee Assistance Programs Integrated Solutions Nutrition Interventions Weight Loss and Obesity Prevention Employee Health Plans Health Risk Assessments Healthier Employees Cultural Assessments Physical Fitness Initiatives Small Business Wellness Tax Credit Consumer Driven Health Plans Health and Productivity Management Incentives

4. If you want to think about it full time… • Fisher Institute for Wellness and Gerontology graduate degree program in Wellness Management • 2 year MA/MS program that combines health enhancement thinking with a foundations of business minor

5. What’s a part-timer to do? • Hire a vendor – make sure they develop into a partner AND they have a monetary investment in assuring participation and change in your employees (maybe split payment for services into 50% for delivering services and 50% for achieving outcomes) • Send your HR manager to receive some training (See University of Southern Indiana and IP-FW offerings… coming soon – certificate in workplace wellness at Ball State) • Partner with the Wellness Council of Indiana and/or develop a local support structure

6. These may be good actions… • But start with thinking! Best Thinking Best Planning Best Doing

7. Start by thinking • Help your company develop: • The “lens” you use to look at workplace wellness • Balanced thinking • A framework to use for intervention thinking • Innovative ideas for wellbeing/health enhancement practice

8. Self Determination Ryan and Deci – University of Rochester

9. Wellness Management Wellness • An integrated method of functioning which is oriented toward maximizing the potential of which the individual is capable, within the environment where he is functioning • Halbert Dunn, 1977 • Supporting opportunities to impact the diverse, multi-dimensional processes important in preserving and protecting health and wellbeing by encouraging Complete Thinking, Balanced Valuing, and Flexibility (Passionate) Intervening at multiple levels Maximizing Human Potential By Supporting Personal/Professional Growth and Development

10. Investing in solutions for the future – and rethinking our approach! Health Science Social Science Natural Science and Engineering Linking the practices together Management Source: International Commission on Education for Sustainable Development Practice (October 2008, Columbia University) Generalist Practitioners

11. “The Last Mile Solution” • http://www.ted.com/talks/sendhil_mullainathan.html

12. Salutogenesis Antonovsky Sense of Coherence Generalized Resistance Resources

13. Salutogenesis • Pathogenesis – the origins of disease • Salutogenesis - the origins of health • Sense of Coherence (Antonovsky): • Your world is understandable: Stimuli from internal and external sources is perceived as structured and predictable. (Comprehensible) • Your world is manageable: Resources exist to meet demands posed by stimuli (Manageability) • Your world has meaning: Demands are challenges worth spending energy/effort on (Meaningfulness) • Health ease/dis-ease continuum

15. GRR-RDs Generalized Resistance resources – resistance deficits • Generalized Resistance Resources: • Properties of a person, a collective or a situation that facilitate successful coping with the inherent stressors of human existence. • GRRs foster repeated life experiences which helped one see the world as 'making sense', cognitively, instrumentally and emotionally. • Wealth, ego strength, cultural stability, environment, support structures, etc. • Moving toward the positive end of the continuum – resource… the negative end – deficit

16. Questions to consider… • What makes us strong? • What experiences make us more resilient? • What opens us to more fully experience life? • What in organizations makes us grow? • How can we give meaning to life? • How can we support the development of GRRs?

17. Tasks to consider… • Manage the pace of life • Set priorities • Develop needed personal and occupational skills • Connect people • As a manager, think about the needs of the whole person… body, mind, and spirit… and think of each individual as an individual rather than as a disease, potential disease, or disease risk factor

18. What Might this Look Like?

20. www.well-beingindex.com/files/2011WBIrankings/IN_StateReport.pdfwww.well-beingindex.com/files/2011WBIrankings/IN_StateReport.pdf

21. Indiana Rank = 39/50

22. IN #6 (Pence) Rank = 412/436 Lowest in Indiana (next lowest - 387)

25. What is Wellness? How does your company view human assets? How does your wellness plan fit within your company’s mission? What is important to your employees? What are your employees willing to change? How can you help make the “healthiest choice” the “easiest choice.”

26. Contact Information: • jellery@bsu.eduwww.bsu.edu/wellness • 765-285-8259 Jane Ellery, Ph.D.Assistant ProfessorAssociate Director, Wellness ManagementFisher Institute for Wellness and Gerontology BALL STATE UNIVERSITY: EDUCATION REDEFINED