Form a committee

One of the most successful employee engagement strategies is to set up a health and wellbeing committee or make health and wellbeing an ongoing and regular agenda item in an existing meeting.

If you have a health and wellbeing committee then the responsibility for decisions and actions does not just fall to one person and it’s a great way to hear diverse opinions and make sure all workplace areas are involved.

To form a valued and effective committee:

Consider a diverse range of participants to get good representation from a range of departments, positions or leadership levels.
Recruit for a range of abilities and then create opportunities for those participants to learn new skills, such as program planning, implementation, monitoring, and marketing and promotion.
Define the purpose of the committee and stay true to this plan. It’s also a good idea to commit to a length of term. Although it might be difficult to define initially, consider the commitment required of each role within the committee, so that participants can nominate themselves to a role accordingly.
Make room for proxy members. Members should be able to nominate a proxy if attendance becomes an issue.
Set timelines and dates in advance. Schedule meeting dates in advance when you start putting together the committee and be clear about the program’s timeline.
Consider approaching health and safety representatives (if applicable) to see if they would like to be involved.

In smaller workplaces the committee may need fewer members, but members should ideally be able to speak on behalf of management and employees and act as program decision makers. It may also be important to evenly spread the workload and responsibilities to various employees to achieve your set goals.

Committee roles could include:

chairperson – usually this role will be filled by the individual managing the health and wellbeing program but a rotating chair, involving everyone on the committee, can help to increase participation and build individual skills
promotions/communication
meeting coordination and hosting
budget and resourcing
external provider/local and community services liaison
record keeping (program activities, evaluation documents and meeting minutes)
reporting.

Members who have limited capacity for involvement could play a different role. For example, they may have skills in policy writing and could commit to that instead. Roles can also change during different phases of the program.

Have your committee in place but not sure how to run it? Take a look at the following resources to help you get started.