.Blog10 Reasons It's a Great Time to Be a Wellness Program Practitioner

 

10 Reasons It's a Great Time to Be a Wellness Program Practitioner

May 27, 2011


Now, more than ever, wellness program practitioners are in an ideal position to expand programs and careers; here’s why:

  1. Healthcare costs continue to climb. It looks like near double-digit increases are here to stay... at least for a while. Although no one expects worksite health promotion to reverse the trend, leading employers are beginning to embrace prevention as a vital part of the mix to manage this expense.
  2. Prevention or delay of chronic conditions is uppermost in the minds of most boomers. The biggest generation in history doesn’t accept the same aging paradigm — boomers expect to live healthier longer than their parents and grandparents. That desire will fuel interest in healthy lifestyles for at least the next 2 decades.
  3. Generation Z is more in tune with quality of life issues. Not content to simply acquire wealth, the children of boomers want balance, creating a natural segue for wellness program messages.
  4. The information economy is more conducive to worksite health promotion interventions. As manufacturing continues to shift overseas, more US workers will toil in offices and at terminals, creating an easier path for raising awareness than pulling workers off the line.
  5. Lifelong learning is becoming the norm. Once just a corporate catch-phrase, today’s workers embrace the idea of continuous learning to control their careers. That attitude opens the door to ongoing wellness as a parallel concept equally important to their future.
  6. Controlled industry growth offers a stable platform for building a corporate health promotion program. While some industries (such as airlines) are in turmoil, most are in a period of modest, controlled growth. This allows business leaders to consider and implement strategies that enhance competitiveness, including employee wellness.
  7. Bright minds are entering our field again. The irrational exuberance of the mid-1990s to early 2000s steered many young people toward more lucrative careers. Colleges are now seeing a renewed interest in wellness careers from a higher caliber of student. This infusion of talent will raise the bar for all health promotion practitioners.
  8. The trail has been blazed. Career wellness professionals who entered the field in the 1980s are beginning to retire, having established a path for those who follow. HR departments are no longer saddled with the question “What to do with employee health promotion?” They’ve answered it.
  9. Vendors are delivering on their promises. In the corporate health promotion industry’s infancy, contracts were awarded more often for lowest cost and the promise of results. Now buyers compare results and purchase value — best outcomes at best cost. This development creates the opportunity for a stable, rewarding career path within vendor organizations.
  10. We know what works. Struggles of the last decades — which saw interest in organization health enhancement go from its height in the early 1990s, through a period of stagnation, and now back to strength — have sharpened the focus. Supported largely by measuring and analyzing interventions, we can see what has impact on employee health behaviors.

Threats to the Future

Health promotion is no more immune than politics to mistakes of the past. As support for these services grows we’ll need to learn from history — resisting the temptation to go in too many directions just because we can. Disciplined planning, execution, and evaluation will be the key to sustainable growth of wellness programs.