Who needs a workplace wellness program? Well, the short answer to this question is everybody! One of the missions of Dr. Mason Orth as a chiropractor in Fargo and the entire team of doctors and staff at ChiroHealth & Rehab of Chiropractor Fargo is to build a healthier community right here in

Fargo-Moorhead. What we know is that most of our places of employment are not places of health and wellness but places where people engage in very poor health habits.

Not only do people typically experience high levels of stress at work but oftentimes they are engaged in unhealthy habits to try and alleviate that stress. Frequently this includes consuming convenient comfort foods that are high in sugar and fat like cookies, donuts and chips. To make it worse, most will wash down these snacks with sugary drinks like pop, energy drinks and juices. This doesn’t even take into consideration the negative impact that typically convenient lunches have when going out or grabbing a quick bite. Although tasty, food choices like burgers, fries, sandwiches and pizza oftentimes mean sacrificing nutrition for convenience.

As if those issues didn’t pose enough of a challenge, what the ChiroHealth & Rehab of Chiropractor Fargo doctors often find is that the workstations and work environments we spend our time in are typically detrimental to the health of our bodies. Most often, employees are spending most of their day doing one of two things, either sitting at a desk in front of a computer all day or, they are repeatedly doing the same activity over and over again leading to repetitive stress injuries.

Something your ChiroHealth & Rehab of Chiropractor Fargo doctors work to help people understand is that sitting in and of itself can lead to a number of chronic diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. But, prolonged sitting and repetitive stresses can also lead to more debilitating diseases like degenerative spinal conditions that cause chronic pain and are very difficult to recover from. Sadly, the habits that we have at work usually follow us through the rest of our life into our home life as well. When combined with the unhealthy habit we have at work, this leads to a slow and steady decline of health and happiness as our bodies continue to decay due to misuse.

The ChiroHealth & Rehab of Chiropractor Fargo doctors knows there is an ample amount of research that show the cost to employers due to employee absenteeism. You may think that an employee missing work is very costly to a business but, even more costly to employers is employee presenteeism. This is when an employee shows up to work but is not engaged in work due to health related issues. In fact, the cost of presenteeism to employers is 10 times higher than if the employee simply did not show up to work.

A landmark study on the topic of workplace wellness was performed by the Rand Corporation in 2013 and they cited a number of reasons for the lack of effectiveness in workplace wellness programs. One of the reasons was the lack of clarity in setting clear and specific goals that employees could strive to attain.   People were left wondering what they were trying to accomplish, how they could accomplish it and why they were even trying in the first place. A major challenge to employees was that programs were hyper-focused on outcomes such as lowering body weight, blood pressure or cholesterol rather than teaching how to change behaviors that would ultimately lead to the desired outcomes.

Another challenge noted by your ChiroHealth & Rehab of Chiropractor Fargo doctors was that participants didn’t have clear and simple goals that told them what it looked like to be reaching a desired outcome. In other words simply telling an employee to lower body weight by 20% did not give employees clear direction or a clear directive that they could reach for.

Another major issue found was lack of communication. In other words leadership engagement was lackluster in many occasions yet they expected the workforce to engage at a high level in the workplace wellness program. In order for wellness programs to really take hold in a work environment there must be 100% buying from leadership. Wellness must be an organizational priority to shift the culture to a culture of wellness.

Another major challenge was a lack of simplicity of a company’s wellness program as well as accessibility of the program to the workforce. Studies show that accessibility was the key and that in order to obtain engagement by employees education must be given in bite-size bits that were easily absorbed with steps that were easily executed by employees.

But how as an employer or human resource manager actually make this happen? Your ChiroHealth & Rehab of Chiropractor Fargo doctors has worked hard to create a program that helps you meet your organizational goals. The doctors and healthcare team are committed to making the Fargo-Moorhead area a much healthier community than it currently is. One of the ways we are pursuing that outcome is to help businesses develop workplace wellness programs that actually encourage engagement and involvement by the workforce they employ.

The ChiroHealth & Rehab of Chiropractor Fargo doctors have put together an extensive yet simple to execute program that solves a number of challenges that employees face when trying to execute a wellness program in their workforce. Our team will help to define clear goals that are focused around changing only one score. This allows the employee to focus on changing one number over the course of a 90-day period. The program encourages engagement by teaching the employees how to change behaviors and habits slowly and one at a time so that they actually take effect but, are also easy to incorporate into their daily routine.

So, what makes our program so unique? Unlike other programs that exist the program created by the ChiroHealth & Rehab of Chiropractor Fargo doctors is doctor created AND doctor directed. Our program even allows for on-site visits by doctors and wellness care specialist to help teach employees and employers how to administer the wellness program into their workforce and into their life. Our workplace wellness program even includes on-site visits to help improve ergonomics as well as provide instructional lectures to both management and workforce. Also, we increase the odds of your success by providing weekly support for those involved in the program so that they continually get feedback which increases engagement and ultimately leads to better.

If you are serious about implementing a workplace wellness program into your business please give us a call at (701) 707-1202 to discuss whether or not you may be a good fit for our program.