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Businesses & Health

In Governor Snyder's Health and Wellness address, he encouraged Michigan worksites to empower their employees with the tools necessary to access quality health care and live a healthy lifestyle. "Health is the foundation for Michigan's economic transformation, it permits . . . our current workforce to grow and adapt to a dynamic economy."

Worksites are the best places to reach the majority of Michigan's adult citizens to encourage them to eat better, move more, and avoid using tobacco products. To remain competitive, Michigan employers may find it necessary to create worksite environments that are supportive of these goals. However, this can be difficult, especially for small businesses. Fortunately, there are various low- or no-cost effective strategies available to Michigan worksites that can assist them in promoting good health and support their employees' healthy lifestyle behaviors.

The National Healthy Worksite Program encourages worksites to follow these steps to better health:

STEP 1: Assess the health of your worksite and employees. Assessments can help identify what changes you can make to your physical worksite environment. Assessments can also identify the health concerns and overall health of your workforce. Read more about environmental assessments, Health Risk Assessments and Employee Interest Surveys to help guide your worksite through this step.

MichiganTools:

Designing Healthy Environments at Work
Health Risk Assessment Instructions
Employee Interest Survey

STEP 2:
 Plan a worksite health promotion program. Your plan will include goal determination; selecting priority interventions; and building organizational infrastructure, such as establishing a wellness committee and engaging senior leadership. The National Healthy Worksite Program has a list of leading health topics, which include links to potential interventions along with suggested evaluation measures.

STEP 3: Implement your program. Take the steps needed to put selected health promotion programs, policies, practices, and environmental supports into place and make them available to employees.

STEP 4: Evaluate your program. Evaluate the quality, effectiveness and importance of your health promotion activities and actions.