Developing a Workplace Wellness Program business Plan, part 2
Workplace Wellness Program business plan review (from Key #19)
• A Workplace Wellness Program business plan is a roadmap for success.
• Your Workplace Wellness Program business plan should convincingly demonstrate that your Workplace Wellness Program will help the organization to achieve its goals.
More smart Workplace Wellness Program business planning strategies
Planning the Workplace Wellness Program
• Determine how your organization plans so that your planning process will be in sync with what already happens in the organization.
• Involve other people. A planning team brings their combined experience and perspective to the process. Including potential partners as you plan will make it easier to get their buy-in later.
Thinking of the big picture
• Look at the barriers and challenges that might be encountered during Workplace Wellness Program implementation. Develop strategies ahead of time to overcome these potential problems.
• Do a SWOT assessment and examine Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.
This assessment will help you establish potential problem areas or resource shortfalls as well as opportunities for growth or increased partnerships with other company personnel.
The WORST business planning strategy: sitting in your office; working by yourself.
The best Workplace Wellness Program business planning strategies
• Get out of your office; get out of the business. The more people you involve in the Workplace Wellness Program planning process, the better. Always look for ways to expand your network.
• Keep your budget people informed. Get to know their philosophy of financial management.
• Be able to articulate the impact if your budget is not fully funded.
o Stay away from basing your impact-if-not-funded argument solely on: “We have to.”
o Instead, describe the impact-if-not-funded with phrases like: injuries to workers, raised compensation costs, raised medical care costs for patients, lost work time, loss of licenses/accreditations, loss of workload to the Tricare network.
• Have purchase requests ready to be submitted. There is frequently a short window of time to process these requests. Having the information gathered ahead of time will make it easy to submit the information right away.
A well thought-out Workplace Wellness Program business plan is critical in these times of shrinking budgets and resources. A good business plan will help you gain leadership support and help you get and keep resources needed to begin the Workplace Wellness Program.
