Thank you to everyone who participated in the Employee Wellness Program Survey! We received a lot of really great feedback, a lot of which has been incorporated into the program! As such, we have a lot of changes to make you aware of. Fair warning - this is a long post, but it contains a lot of information that you'll ultimately want to know. Make sure to read it all!
The topics covered below represent the most commonly reported feedback. If your concerns do not appear below, please know that we read through each and every comment and truly appreciate all of your feedback. If you have any other questions or have thought of any other ways to improve the program, please Megan at mpassey@co.weber.ut.us and we'll respond to you personally.
1) New Options and Changes on the Activity Menu:
Let's start off by saying that a lot has changed -
please download the most current Activity Menu and use that version from here out.
The number of points available for fitness related activities have been increased from one to six hours, per year. Number of hours will be awarded based on the commitment level required for the particular activity - i.e. full marathons will count for more hours than a family fun run.
Several of you also mentioned that you like the idea of a monthly lunch time presentation series. That's a great idea! We will start offering monthly
Brown Bag Lunch Presentations in room #312 of the Weber Center on the 4th Wednesday of each month. Presentations will be given at 12:15 and 1:15 to account for lunchtime shifts and give everyone a chance to come. But don't worry! The presentations will only be 30 minutes long (we just need a break in between)!
Our first presentation of the year will be held on March 26th and will be a general introduction to the Weber County Employee Wellness Program. Help spread the word to your co-workers and encourage them to join us! Click
here to download a flyer for the March presentation or click above to download the flyer for the overall series. For more information, please download the most current Activity Menu. If there's a topic that your department would like to see covered (such as stress management), please let us know.
We've also added options for getting adult immunizations, other than the flu shot, getting your yearly checkup and visiting the dentist for your 6 month cleanings. Thank you, to those of you who came up with those ideas!
Several people also requested getting credit for "seasonal activities," and ski resort season passes. Living in a mountainous state, we think this is a valid point. Ski resorts and pools have been added to the menu option that includes gym and rec. center passes. Basically, if it's a place that you go to be active that you pay to access, we'll count it. Credit will be awarded for every 3 months of membership. Because of the variability of ski seasons from year to year, ski passes will count for a flat 1 hour/ 6 months. Now... many of you requested offering these kinds of memberships as payroll deductions, like what's currently available for local gyms. While we'd love to do that, we just can't. As a governmental agency, any time we offer a partnership with a business, we have to offer that option to all, similar businesses. Which is why we have to send purchase requests to be bid on and why we do our annual Gym Open House. ALL area gyms are invited to the open house and employees can then choose between their various deals and options available for county employees. If we expanded that concept to include other recreational facilities, we have to offer it up to ALL ski resorts, pools, recreation centers, etc., which is too overwhelming for our capacity at this time.
Some of the existing Activity Menu options have been revised to simplify the documentation requirements and to provide clarification, so, in a nutshell,
please download the most current Activity Menu!
Many people commented that it was difficult to keep track of activities throughout the year. We have based this program on similar programs offered at other counties, through insurance programs (such as Humana) and through other corporate wellness programs nation-wide. Most programs that follow this formatting - a list of pre-approved activities, with set "point" values that translate into employee incentives -have similar, if not identical, requirements. In fact, we heard from several county employees who have participated in similar programs, either through past jobs or through other insurance coverage, who said that they're used to doing it, anyway. One person mentioned doing it for her husband's insurance and was glad to also receive vacation time for the same amount of work. For the vast majority of us, however, this is a new thought process and we understand that it's going to take a little bit of time to become second nature.
Some of these similar programs are able to maintain dedicated wellness program staff, offer online tracking software and provide other employee incentives, such as monetary "bonuses." Some agencies pay for these features by implementing automatic, mandatory, payroll deductions that employees then earn back by completing wellness activities. Though the amounts are typically small (one local county subtracts about $7 per month), we didn't feel that it was our place to do that with your money. Other agencies have grant funding that supports their programs, which we are actively looking for, but at this time, we don't have any. We hope to one day be able to offer you all more for your participation, or do more on our end to help you stick with it, but at this time, this is really the only way that we can bring this program to you.
While we can't provide you with software to track your activities, or a staff person to keep track of it for you, we can try to make the documentation a little bit easier. Check boxes have been added to the
Activity Menu so that it can serve as a checklist. Keep in mind, however, that we may add additional activities throughout the year, so if you're going to use the activity menu as a checklist,
please check back on the blog or pay attention to your e-mails to know if other activities become available. The End-Of-Year Summary form will be posted toward the end of the year (likely in November) and will contain ALL of the activities. Think of it as a master checklist that you'll fill out and send in for your vacation hours.
We've also simplified a lot of the documentation requirements to make it easier on you. Some "documentation" will be purely on the honor system so please, be honest and be fair to your fellow employees. Please see the most current version of the Activity Menu to ensure that you're going off of the most current requirements!
3) Variety of Activity Menu Options:
Several people commented that activities were only available for young people/ middle aged people/ older people (we had at least one comment for each age group!). Someone else mentioned that the activities all cost money. Rest assured that there are activities for all ages, fitness levels and interests (we hope!), most of which are free or low-cost. As a provision of the Affordable Care Act, most preventive care is fully covered through your insurance company. If in doubt, contact your insurance to verify that you're covered. If you have Select Health insurance, there's a pretty awesome service called "Member Advocates." Their phone number is listed on the back of your insurance card. They can not only tell you what your insurance coverage will allow, they can also find you a nearby doctor with available appointments AND connect you with their office to schedule!
As always, if you have any other ideas for activities on the Activity Menu, please let us know.
4) Getting Credit for Daily Physical Activity/ Daily Nutrition:
Many people requested a mechanism to reward what you do to stay healthy on a daily basis. While we do want you to get your 30 minutes of physical activity, each day, and eat a healthy diet, we have no way to keep track of it or verify it. We're looking into some options, though, and we hope we can figure something out. In the mean time, we encourage you to participate in the Intern Wellness Challenges, which always include components for physical activity and nutrition that are aimed at meeting current recommendations. These challenges would serve as a "snapshot" of what you do throughout the year, and could earn you up to 6 hours each year for participation.
5) Intern Challenges
Speaking of Intern Wellness Challenges (formerly called Intern Wellness Programs, Intern Mini-Programs), we noticed a lot of confusion surrounding these challenges vs. the overall Weber County Employee Wellness Program. To be clear, these are PART OF the wellness program. They are one option for receiving credit, though you don't have to go that route if it doesn't interest you. To help distinguish them from the Wellness Program, we will begin referring to them as "Challenges." Furthermore, the interns are each required to do one lunch time presentation over the course of their challenge. These presentations will be SEPARATE from the Brown Bag Lunches in point #1.
Please note that the interns who are over these challenges are not involved with other aspects of the larger wellness program. We're going to try to do a better job of integrating the two to give you more reminders about other opportunities to earn hours, but the interns are only involved with this one aspect. As such, they can't answer a lot of your questions, collect your Resource Guide Quizzes or your Assessment Summary Forms. For all matters relating to the wellness challenges, e-mail internhe@co.weber.ut.us (this e-mail will remain constant, no matter which intern is over the challenge that semester). For everything else, e-mail Megan at mpassey@co.weber.ut.us. End of Year Materials -such as your Summary Form, Resource Guide Quiz and Assessment Summary Form (if applicable) - go to Chris Ward in Human Resources at the end of the year. We do not have the ability to keep track of things for you - please don't send in documentation at any other time than at the end of the year! It WILL be lost!
6) Reminders and Communication
Many people said that they would appreciate more frequent communications and reminders on the Wellness Program. Good point. We'll do our best over the course of the year to send out e-mails, maintain this blog and find other ways to get the message out. That said, we need all of you to be our advocates in your offices! Download the
Wellness Program Flyer and post it in communal places in your office. If you're good at checking the blog for updates, share them with your co-workers to encourage everyone to get on board! We are currently looking into setting up a dedicated wellness program e-mail address, so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle of your in-box. We're also looking at getting a Wellness Committee set up to provide us with feedback on the program and to give us an avenue to communicate program materials to your individual divisions. Stay tuned for more information!
Thanks, again, for all of your feedback!
