BY JAPHETH AMIMO
This is the time of the year when most people and some organisations try to come up with the New Year’s resolutions. Most of the resolutions are commonly based on individual health plans with a promise to make it better by exercising more or reducing alcohol intake, spending more time with loved ones and so on. You will find with all these plans in place some will actually start by committing to some programme.
A good number begin a lifestyle change but very few go beyond Valentine’s Day with the programme. Organisations are not an exception; they come up with an event like a ‘wellness day’ where they hold nutrition talks and carry out Health Risk Assessments (HRAs).
While all this is good, wellness is a continuous process and not a one-day event. Being healthy or unhealthy is not as a result of a single day’s event but an accumulation of all the good or the bad things we put into our mouths. By this I mean the choices we make on average four days of the week.
So why is it that when it comes to doing anything to do with wellness for organizations, it is made a one-off event and expected to change employees’ lives for the rest of the year?
It must be emphasised that these are new grounds for most of Kenyan organisations and most countries in the world. Successful organisations in this area have structures in place and committed, enthusiastic wellness managers. Their job is to make sure the programme is alive and effective all year round. They have a short-term, midterm and long-term strategic plan with a budget to back it up.
A good wellness programme should address the three pillars of wellness namely physical, psychological and spiritual.
The programme must have ways of monitoring progress, success or failures and, lastly, check the return on investment (ROI). A good programme should have an average ration of 1:3. That is, if you invest Sh1,000, your return should be Sh3000.
Successful organisations in this area have had returns of 1:6, more than any investment in the stock markets. Lastly, the programme objectives have to be SMART to succeed. The capacity of employees coordinating the programme has to be continuously built through training.
