Health and wellness services are widely available to firms in this quality work-life era. You’ll find with most firms, they provide structured programs with specific step-by-step procedures to follow in order to reach your goal. Programs simplify the work for the program provider and are defined as a planned series of events.

By replacing “health and wellness” programs with structured “quality work-life” standards, a firm produces employee freedom to create ideas based on defined cultural values. Standards are a natural form of measure that considers individuality and autonomy. Standards also create cultural equality. Community and flexibility results in fostering a culture that creates masterminds because employees are leading rather than following step-by-step procedures.

Clarify the standard rigor. Below, you’ll see a menu of options as a starting point to inspire and challenge innovative thinking. These standards create moments and spaces with permission to problem-solve for individuality of an organization and autonomy of employees.

One committee of volunteers, who will act as representatives for the rest of the employees, will meet as a group with the employer and collaborate on how best to implement wellness strategies.

Volunteer employees lead workshops on their chosen wellness strategy that they consider themselves to be experts on. (maybe based on highest scores of screen if not confidentiality violation).

Employees are divided into cohorts at random.

OPTION ONE

Within each cohort, all members choose a wellness strategy. They are then given resources to learn about the strategy, become experts on the topic, and each week a different member teaches the rest of their cohort about their strategy. Following the presentation, individuals will practice implementing the learned strategy in their own lives before sharing their experiences and problem-solving any major obstacles.

OPTION TWO

All members are given resources regarding the same wellness strategy and asked to learn it and practice it at their own pace. By the end of the week, cohorts meet to share their experiences and problem-solve any major obstacles.

OPTION THREE

Each cohort is assigned a wellness strategy and must collaboratively devise a plan of action to implement the wellness strategy into their work structure. Then, each week, a different cohort presents their ideas to the rest of the employees while educating them on the topic. All employees will practice implementing the learned strategy in their own lives before meeting as a cohort to share their experiences and problem-solve any major obstacles.

OPTION FOUR

Each week (or biweekly), all employees are introduced to a new wellness strategy, learn as an entire office, and then have a group discussion within their cohorts. Cohorts are then changed every month or once it is time to switch the focus to strategies from a different dimension of wellness.

Employees are strategically divided into cohorts.

OPTION ONE

Half of the cohorts focusing on individual wellness strategies and the other half focusing on company-wide workplace strategies.

OPTION TWO

As a cohort, members will learn about wellness strategies within a particular dimension of wellness, practice implementing the learned strategy in their own lives, and share their experience and problem-solve major obstacles. Then, once each member of a cohort feels they have mastered all the strategies within a dimension, the cohort will use their expertise to devise an action plan to implement these strategies/concepts into the company structure to improve workplace wellness.

Employees are autonomously divided into cohorts with the focus being whichever dimension of wellness their are most interested in. Each cohort will spend a few weeks becoming experts on their topic of interest. Then, employees are divided into new cohorts in which each member is an expert on a different dimension of wellness. The following weeks are spent sharing their expertise on each subject with each member offering a diverse perspective on the subject.

Employees as experts. Employees are asked to self-rate their satisfaction with their quality of wellness in each dimension. Based on those ratings, the highest raters in a particular dimension form a committee of “experts” who are responsible for translating their individual wellness strategies into workplace strategies that could be implemented in the company’s structure. These representatives or experts can also contribute their opinions to the employer based on their own professional reasoning and the shared perspective of the other employees.