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Shetek Area Sportsmen Association event staff, pictured (L to R): Piper Schulte, Chris Diekmann, Travis Radke, Brian Keller, Jordan Rolling, Ashley Radke, Sam Rolling, Dan Carlson, Jim Carlson.
EMPLOYEE WELLNESS ENCOURAGED AT FULDA PUBLIC SCHOOL
This past fall, Fulda Public School signed up to participate in the Statewide Health Improvement Partnership (SHIP) worksite wellness collaborative, alongside other school partners. SHIP works with community partners, like Fulda Public School, to create and expand opportunities for all Minnesotans to be more physically active, eat healthier foods, encourage breastfeeding and live free from commercial tobacco, thereby improving lives and decreasing chronic disease in our communities. SHIP has found that one of the best ways to incorporate wellness into workplaces is to create a short-term collaborative, with a combination of opportunities.
The worksite wellness collaborative is a six month commitment that focuses on networking, hearing from speakers about health focused strategies and receiving wellness tools and resources provided by SHIP. Upon completion, each collaborative member has the tools they need to create healthy change in their organization as well as long term support to continue their efforts.
Over the course of the collaborative, the Fulda Public School formed a wellness team and set wellness goals for the next six months. One goal was to increase healthy eating among employees. To kick-off this goal and encourage employees, the wellness team applied for a Community Partner Award through SHIP for healthy snack stations. The snack stations were placed in the teachers’ lounges in both school buildings. They provide employees with healthy snack options instead of relying on snacks from the vending machine. The healthy snack stations follow the federal guidelines set forth for school snacks focusing on lower calories, fat, sugar and sodium.
One Fulda School employee stated “When afternoon hunger hits, it’s nice to have healthy options available right at school because most of us can’t leave the building during the day” and another employee stated “When I forget to grocery shop, it’s nice to know I have healthy options at work”.
Employers lose billions of dollars annually due to medical expenditures and lost productivity because of employee’s poor health. Workplace wellness can help build a healthy work culture that benefits not only the employee, but the employer as well. It helps improve job performance, employee engagement, job satisfaction and employee retention.
“I enjoy working with community partners to develop goals and find innovative ways to encourage staff to become more active and healthier throughout their work day”, Jen Nelson, SHIP Coordinator.
If you are interested in being a part of a SHIP worksite wellness collaborative contact our SHIP coordinator, Jen Nelson, at jennifer.nelson@swmhhs. com for more information.
