Feb. 26, 2010 — I recently received a message from a marketing coordinator from an organization called Nurtur. My first thought was, "How did these people get my e-mail address?" But after looking a little closer, I realized this wasn't just for any ordinary organization. This message was from Nurtur, a new partner of WorkLife Innovations.
For many professionals in the work-life business, WorkLife Innovations is a household name. Founded by Mary-Ellen Rodgers in 1986, she states it was "spurred by my own work-life need for more flexibility and less travel than a corporate Human Resources position could afford me at that time. As the mother of two young boys, I was inspired to help working moms to lead more balanced and guilt-free lives."
Mary-Ellen has been in the work-life field since 1981 and a supporter of the Alliance for Work-Life Progress (AWLP) since its inception in 1996. She tuned into work-life after having children. When I asked her how her work-life journey began, she said that when she was ready to return to work, the realities of her quest to find quality child care fell short of her expectations and prompted her to take action.
"I started one of the first in-house work-life programs in the nation for my employer, The Travelers, and then collaborated with three of our corporate neighbors in downtown Hartford to form a consortium of companies that became The Connecticut Consortium for Child Care. We worked with our local United Way to establish a statewide data base of child-care providers, and we worked with the Capitol Region Education Council to develop training to encourage quality, licensed care for home providers, and NAYEC accreditation for centers. I called upon my social work background and spent many evenings and weekends canvassing the state to recruit providers and offer them training in child development, child safety, positive discipline and small-business skills. We were able to significantly elevate the profession from that of 'babysitter' to professional. The majority of child-care providers that I met during this campaign for quality were caring, nurturing individuals who craved the education, support and validation that licensing brought to their role."
This hasn't been Mary-Ellen's only venture. She has been very successful with work-life endeavors throughout her career. More recently, as she continued to learn how important health and wellness issues are becoming to employees, she realized a change in the way things were being done at her organization was a must.
"Back in 1995 I began to see that many of our work-life and EAP clients' employees and dependents had significant health challenges. We could do a great deal to assist with life challenges, and mental health challenges, but if we didn't attempt to find appropriate health-care resources, help people to figure out how to pay for health care, or disseminate the technical details of their care so that they could make good decisions, all the assistance we could give them with respect to work-life or EAP issues was for naught. Simply, life and health are inseparable."
At this point, Mary-Ellen began talks with Dan Cave, the CEO or Nurtur, a work-life health and wellness organization that provides life and health coaching. Dan shared Mary-Ellen's view, but from a health perspective. The wheels were in motion and with their two different, yet very similar views, they decided to merge in 2008 and create an organization that takes wellness from both ends of the spectrum making it not just about physical health, but about life as well. The merger has proven beneficial to the long standing clients of WorkLife Innovations providing them with the benefits a large company has to offer, but with the same intimate customer service they are used to receiving from WorkLife Innovations. Clients benefit from services such as life coaches that include RNs, exercise physiologists, registered dieticians; all of whom are co-located with the work-life and EAP counselors.
When asked about the challenges of integrating health and wellness into work-life Mary-Ellen said, "Interestingly, 'health and wellness' is consistently one of the most prevalent areas of utilization of our work-life services for our client organizations." She later added, "I believe that as the trend toward consumer-driven healthcare continues, we will see this interest in health and wellness increase proportionally. The challenge to effective integration is supplying best-in-class health and wellness information and resources in multiple media approaches (articles, videos, podcasts, seminars, mobile, etc.). As health and wellness information is constantly changing, it is critical to constantly update communication approaches to always provide the most current and relevant information.
Mary-Ellen has taken an innovative and aggressive approach to getting health and wellness resources out to those who need it. For more information on WorkLife Innovations and Nurtur and how they might be able to help you and your employees, visit go online.
What is your organization doing to tackle health and wellness issues?
William McPeck, WLCP Director, Employee Health & Safety Member Since: 8/1/2006 Comments: 44
Successful worksite wellness programs require more than just providing educational resources. We have known for a long time that education alone is not enough to either drive or maintain behavior change. Research has demonstrated that successful worksite wellness programs need to be comprehensive in nature. They need to encompass all of the following: awareness, education, behavior change and supportive environments (policy and environmental changes).
Unfortunately, many worksite wellness programs today are activity focused, rather than being results driven. If we want worksite wellness efforts to be successful, we need to implement comprehensive, evidence based and results driven worksite wellness programs.
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