Staff wellness programs schools

Permission Request. Transgender Inclusion. Momentum Magazine. Et Cetera Newsletter. Annual Conference An engaging three-day event you won't want to miss. School employee wellness programs can help. Schools can provide an employee wellness program for staff that includes healthy eating and physical activity services.

When staff model these healthy behaviors, they can reinforce them with students. Use this tip sheet for help with starting a school employee wellness program. Watch this short video external icon to get inspired! Other Ways to Make a Difference Give Make a tax-deductible donation to give more kids a healthy future. All Resources Start browsing our entire resource library. See all resources.

Staff Well-Being. Assess Your Program Assess the current status of your staff wellness offerings and determine your next steps for greater impact. Make Wellness a Priority Create a culture of wellness to help your staff practice healthy habits during and after work hours.

Plan for Success Learn how to effectively plan and communicate your wellness initiatives with staff. Evaluate Your Program Evaluate and measure the results of your employee wellness program to determine your next steps. Some schools will have a dedicated section of the district newsletter or online communications that focuses on current wellness topics and challenges.

These are also great ways to communicate team-based competitions between different schools. Every worksite has HR professionals, benefits committees, and its ministers. But schools have even more support for wellness.

Schools have physical education teachers, nutrition experts, nurses, health educators, and food service experts. Universities and colleges that train PE teachers have modified their curriculum to include wellness and lifestyle management. They realize that physical education in schools is most effective when students form lifelong habits of fitness.

The same physical education instructors should be part of every wellness committee and should be identified as school wellness champions. When combined with the nutrition teachers, health teachers, and nurses, schools have a very strong wellness support staff. These individuals should be part of a schools wellness committee. They have great ideas and experience on how to make a wellness program fun and effective. In short, schools have the leadership and content expertise they need to create and administer great school wellness programs.

After a few months of participating in a school well-being program, school employees often start many of their own wellness activities. An effective school wellness program can create a sense of camaraderie between employees. Employees will participate in the wellness campaigns and challenges but will often want to do more. School employees have been known to organize healthy potluck lunches, before work and have to work exercise classes or walking clubs.

Some schools have special fitness classes like Zumba or yoga specifically for other employees. In the summer months when school is out employees will often create hiking clubs. Obviously any employees at any worksite can put together their own health and fitness activities.

What makes schools so special is the access to fitness and nutrition facilities, close-knit working groups that are almost like family, and access to faculty and staff who are experts at exercise, fitness, unhealthy eating. Once school employees begin to participate in school wellness programs, they start to desire to share their good health transformations with others, especially students and their communities.

Students see school employees participating in wellness and start asking questions. Teachers start to include more of the healthy living and healthy lifestyles information in their classes. Some schools have even started student-based wellness programs to complement the school wellness program that is offered to employees. Instead of just including employees, individuals start to include others.

Some schools support and promote local fun runs or races. These are shared with not just school employees but also students and members of the community.

Some schools have started school-based farmers markets. What starts as an effort within the school district to improve employee health and reduce healthcare costs transforms into a community effort to help both students and their families live healthier lives.

Researchers have published a serious of research articles showing the impact of a school wellness program. There is more research published on the school wellness program at Boise school district than perhaps any other wellness program in existence. When done right, these programs can improve health behaviors, reduce elevated health risks, dramatically control healthcare costs, and improve productivity. After 12 and 24 months, dramatic improvements were seen in those employees who had previously reported low levels of baseline exercise, fruit and vegetable consumption, days of restful sleep, and high levels of tobacco and alcohol use.

These improvements in health behaviors and health risks had a direct impact on reducing employee health care costs. This research and other research studies prove that schools are perhaps the most effective place to offer a comprehensive wellness program.

There is nothing magical or special about wellness programs in most schools. If they are designed properly and use the right technology , they will be effective. Here are the different components of the wellness program at Boise school district. School employees can benefit from having a school wellness program. There are ample reasons to support having a wellness program at every school. Those that do offer staff wellness programs will be rewarded with improved employee health, lower health care costs and greater work satisfaction.

Aldana is the CEO of Wellsteps, a worksite wellness solution that leads the nation in wellness program deployment and engagement. Aldana authored over 75 scientific papers and 7 books on health risk management, healthy living, and health promotion programs.

He has given over keynote speeches across the U. Steve Aldana Last updated Apr 16, Views 7. Browse by section: click any of the links below to jump to a section. School Employees Are Like Family. So What? Aggregate data is used in program design and evaluation and is collected every year. This free culture audit tool helps worksites assess health-promoting policies and environments. Each quarter, the onsite wellness program coordinator and wellness committee use these results to identify one policy or environmental support to implement.

Each year, the district made multiple environmental changes including vending machine changes, cafeteria changes, creation of walking paths, and rules for healthy birthday food celebrations. Rewards Rewards is an incentive management platform.

Employees earn points and progress towards the benefit-based incentive when they complete program requirements such as the PHA, biometric screening, or campaign completion.