Corporate Wellness Incentive Plans

Gaining upper management reinforcement is essential to the success of a physical exercise program.

Whether the changes you’d like to make involve the work environment, central policies or specific programs, successfully launching your ideas is dependent upon management support.

Support from management is essential for three reasons:

• You need their agreement to involve staff members in a workplace program.
• When management pays attention to and supports program, employees also see the program as worthwhile.
• Senior Management has the authority to give work time and money to support the program.

It’s important to keep management involved throughout a physical activity initiative, but at three points you’ll need backing for:

• An central concept, including a go-ahead to assess what workers want to do within the limitations of your workplace environment.
• A detailed plan (based on the assessment above) coupled with resources to carry out the plan.
• Analyzing the initiative to better it along the way or to advocate for continuing or expanding the initiative.

Approaching Senior Management

Before approaching senior staff to gain initial support for promoting physical exercise during work, do your homework.

• Prepare a employer case clearly outlining how the employer will advance by promoting physical exercise during the workday.
• List the individual, social and corporate benefits of physical activity and the benefits of being active during the workday.
• Present some basic ideas about what the program could include. See the Success Stories and Ideas sections on this website to highlight what other workplaces have done.

Expect questions such as the following from upper management:

• How will this help our corporation?
• How can we excite workers to take part?
• How much will it cost to run this program or make this change?
• How are we going to know a year from now whether or not this was a meaningful use of time and resources?

Ask managers about the types of activities they would support. Often managers have their own ideas they would like to see acted on to better the workplace.

Remember to include middle managers when gaining backing for your plan. They can be very helpful when you need volunteers to lead teams in corporate physical activity challenges.