Health and Wellness Program Analysis
Introduction
Nike Inc. is a US-based multinational company that manufactures sporting gear and equipment. The company designs and manufactures sporting gear, including shoes, jerseys, trousers, shirts, jackets, vests etc. Further, the company also produces other sporting items such as balls, rackets, sticks, nets, just to mention a few. Over the years, Nike has experienced robust growth following its successful operations. Nike reports that it has over 75,000 employees as of the year 2020. Nike’s top priority is to maintain quality and happy workforce. Consequently, Nike has a health and wellness program to ensure optimal quality of life for its employees. Notably, Nike’s health and wellness program is ranked among the top ten best programs globally.
Health and wellness program are basically an arrangement designed and developed by an employer to maintain a quality workforce (Busbin & Campbell 1990). Such programs ensure quality health through avenues such as illness prevention, stress management, fitness exercises, proper diet, and health insurance. Most health and wellness programs include activities aimed at weight loss, fitness challenges, smoking cessation, therapy and other programs to improve the employees’ wealth. Further these programs aim at reducing the employees’ cost of healthcare through insurance premiums or Medicare arrangements.
Nike developed its employee health and wellness program in the year 2010. This followed rigorous efforts that were undertaken to educate the management on the importance of a healthy workforce (Passey et al. 2018). This was important as the management needed to see how employee health affected their behaviour while at the workplace. First, this education focused on demonstrating health cost drivers within the organization. Quite often, Nike had to incur healthcare costs for its employees diagnosed with health complications such as Obesity, Diabetes, High Stress, Smoking, Alcohol abuse, and high blood pressure. Another important element in education was revealing the causes of employee absenteeism, where sick-offs were leading at 34%. Consequently, the management was in agreement that there was a need for a health and wellness program.
The program had to include the needs of the aging workforce, increased women at the workplace, a rising proportion of Latino workers, more employees with chronic conditions or multiple risk factors, and lastly, a higher number of employees taking multiple jobs. Several individual factors were included in order to develop a comprehensive health and wellness program. One, each employee’s past behaviour had to be incorporated due because habits are embedded in the neurological systems. The study also included demographic aspects such as sex age and marital status. Thirdly, personality traits including goal direction, gratification etc. were included. The fourth element of consideration was family functionality, such as the presence of dependents. Lastly, the study sought to understand social support for each employee and how it influenced their behaviour.
Consequently, a health and wellness program was built on three pillars: Organizational cultures and practices, policies, and incentives aimed at ensuring employee’s quality health (Bloom S. 2008). The program focused on four key areas that were physical wellbeing, financial wellbeing, social and community wellbeing, and mental and emotional wellbeing.
Physical activity
Nike targeted physical activity as a primary means of achieving health and wellness for its employees. The company started by creating prompts that motivated employees to embrace physical activity. For example, the company put up signs next to the elevator, urging people to take up a few steps on the staircase for better health. Secondly, Nike introduced gentle fitness classes such as low impact aerobics and yoga for its employees. These classes aimed at motivating those employees that were new to exercise (Gebhardt & Crump 1990). The company also developed a fully equipped gymnasium where the staff could engage in exercises such as weight lifting. Additionally, Nike introduced a swimming pool next to the gymnasium so that people could swim whenever as a way to fitness. Another strategy for Nike was the incorporation of multiple equipped break areas strategically located within the premises. These break areas included items such as basketball hoops, boxing bags, horseshoe pitching stations and table tennis equipment. For each department, one employee was tasked with encouraging others to take up stretch breaks to ensure blood circulation. Lastly, the company developed a fitness club where all staff were encouraged to enrol.
Nutrition
As identified by the study, nutrition is core to employee health and wellness. One’s diet over an extended period greatly contributes to their health outcomes. Poor eating habits lead to conditions such as diabetes and high blood pressure. For this reason, Nike initiated nutrition-focused strategies to help guide their employees to better health. One, the company started lunch and learn lessons within its cafeterias. Here, video lessons and once in a while, lecture/talks were conducted in the cafeteria to educate the employees. Further, the company started offering webinars so that employees working from remote locations could benefit as well. Another strategy was to give compulsory online nutritional courses, including examinations for all employees. Nike replaced vending machine items such as chocolate and candy with healthy foodstuff such as fruits. Also, Nike started offering coupons for health-conscious restaurants to encourage its employees to eat in such joints.
Information and Education
Nike was keen on developing a culture of health and wellness from the new program. As such, the company saw it fit to furnish all the staff with information on healthy living constantly. Nike started emailing daily health tips to all its staff. These tips would include things such as healthy recipes, fitness exercises, etc. The organization invested in more books and audio cassettes for employees to learn from. In this light, the company started stocking a cart with health booklets, magazines, and brochures every Thursday. The cart would be moved around the premises so that many employees could access the materials therein.
Health Benefits
Lastly, the company introduced a healthcare benefit program founded on four key elements. One, the benefit offered health and dental coverage to all employees. This facility would cover aspects such as vision and paramedical services, enhanced hospital care, chiropractic services, and massage therapy. The second element of the benefits program focused on disability coverage, specifically replacement coverage. That is if an employee becomes disabled while at work, they would continue earning from their insurance cover. Also, the benefit covered life and critical illness as the third element. Here, the benefit would cover employee from chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Lastly, the benefits covered employee wellness, including mental and emotional aspects.
Conclusion
Nike has one of the best health and wellness programs globally. The program was developed in 2010 after a thorough management education program followed by a company study. Consequently, a program that incorporated general and individual factors such as demographics, health, and culture was developed. The program sought to improve the health and wellness of the employees through four key areas. These areas are nutrition, physical exercise, information and education, and health benefits. Notably, Nike has gradually benefited from the health and wellness program. The program has resulted in a motivated workforce and thus, higher productivity. Additionally, the company’s health costs have reduced significantly over the years (Baicker Cutler & Song, 2010). Lastly, Nike has benefited a healthy workforce.
Work cited
Baicker, K., Cutler, D., & Song, Z. (2010). Workplace wellness programs can generate savings. Health affairs, 29(2), 304-311.
Bloom, S. (2008). Employee wellness programs. Professional Safety, 53(8), 41-42.
Busbin, J. W., & Campbell, D. P. (1990). Employee wellness programs: a strategy for increasing participation. Journal of health care marketing, 10(4).
Gebhardt, D. L., & Crump, C. E. (1990). Employee fitness and wellness programs in the workplace. American psychologist, 45(2), 262.
Passey, D. G., Brown, M. C., Hammerback, K., Harris, J. R., & Hannon, P. A. (2018). Managers’ support for employee wellness programs: An integrative review. American Journal of Health Promotion, 32(8), 1789-1799.