Workplace Wellness

Promoting a healthy workplace is well worth the investment.

Healthy, active employees have lower health costs – benefiting both the employee and business. And those employees are typically more productive.

Apply for Healthy KC Certification by September 30!

The Healthy KC Workplace action team has created a health and wellness certification program that recognizes area organizations for innovation and excellence in promoting a culture of health in the workplace. The certification cycle spans two years and certifications range from Honorable Mention up to Platinum and are based on the pillars of health outlined by the World Health Organization.

The Pillars

Healthy KC Overall Presenting Sponsor

2020 Certified Companies

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Workplace Wellness Action Report

The Objective & Criteria

The Workplace Wellness action team set its objective – “to build a well-designed, well-executed and sustainable certification framework to drive engagement from KC Metro area employers in workplace wellness” and its guiding principles – “that the program would be accessible to organizations of all sizes, create sustainable wellness outcomes, and include positive recognition for employers”. The team reviewed the work of other cities that have been successful in driving workplace wellness – Austin, Oklahoma City, Omaha and Lawrence, Kansas. The team also discussed existing national models for workplace wellness certification including the CEO Cancer Gold Standard.

Based on this research, the team identified four pillars of the program:

Nutrition
Physical fitness
Tobacco
Mindfulness/whole person

Next, criteria were established under each pillar:

Leadership and policies
Resources
Engagement tools
Measurements and outcomes

The Benchmarks

Finally, specific benchmarks were identified. These benchmarks were uploaded into a draft Healthy KC Workplace Wellness application, with a simple “check the box” format.

The Workplace Wellness action team envisions that this certification program would be launched digitally on the KC Chamber website and accessible online. Three levels of certification are proposed (perhaps bronze, silver, and gold). Initially, certification can be achieved at any point throughout the year, but that could change going forward. It is proposed that once per year there will be a recognition event and organizations and certification levels will be posted on the KC Chamber website. Additional recognition may be included in other mediums.

Measures of Success for a Healthy KC Workplace

The success of the Healthy KC Certification program would ultimately be determined by improved health outcomes across a broad variety of indicators over a long period of time. However, because such improvement is difficult to attribute to any one particular program, the Workplace Wellness action team instead recommends measuring success on this endeavor by measuring participation among area organizations. Below is data showing the targeted levels of participation on year one through year three.