Health Links (HL): Why is the health and wellness of your employees important to the Colorado Health Insitute?

Colorado Health Institute (CHI): Caring for other human beings includes making sure they are healthy at work. We want people to be happy and have a good work-life balance. That’s a big part of our company culture.

HL: What makes the CHI worksite wellness program successful?

CHI: The success of our program can be seen by the response of our employees and their behaviors. When employees tell us they are happy and enjoy coming to work and when the unhealthy food begins to leave the break room and is replaced by healthy snacks, we know that our program is working.

HL: What obstacles did you have to overcome to get your program started? How did you overcome them?

CHI: Money was an obstacle to overcome at first. A lot of times wellness programs won’t save small organizations any money, but we wanted to make an impact on employee morale and knew that wellness was an important factor to making that happen. We’ve made wellness a budget priority.

HL: What advice would you give to a business that is considering starting their own workplace wellness program?

CHI: Just do it. Expectations for what people hope to get out of a job are changing. They want a good work-life balance and a fun, healthy and holistic environment to work in. When you begin to include wellness as part of the culture your organization becomes more attractive to potential employees.