Organizing a Successful Employee Health Fair
In 2016, I organized my first health fair for the OCuSOFT team, which then consisted of approximately 75 employees. Today, our team has grown to over 200 members and is still expanding. Despite our size back then, we were a formidable force. The health fair's success earned me the Employee of the Month recognition and marked a significant milestone in my career as a corporate wellness director.
Listen to the episode on Kathie’s Coaching Podcast
Over the years, I've learned valuable lessons from organizing health fairs. Today, I'll share with you the ins and outs, the ups and downs, and all the insights I've gained.
A health fair can significantly enhance team culture and wellness. If your team comprises 50 or more employees and you're interested in the burgeoning field of corporate wellness, I invite you to grab a coffee or your preferred beverage. Start planning your next successful health fair using this comprehensive resource: it includes a video, podcast episode, and a blog post. Don't forget to download your checklist!
Organizing a Successful Employee Health Fair
Employee wellness is a vital part of any organization. With the growing focus on health and well-being, more companies are turning to initiatives like health fairs to support their staff. This blog aims to provide you with insights into the benefits and planning of a successful health fair.
Understanding the Health Fair
Imagine a health fair as a day dedicated to nurturing a garden, where instead of plants, you are nurturing the diverse wellness needs of your employees. A health fair offers a range of resources designed to enhance physical, mental, and emotional health.
The Importance and Challenges of Organizing a Health Fair
Organizing a health fair has substantial benefits. It boosts employee morale and engagement, promotes a culture of health and well-being, provides valuable health resources, and encourages preventive care and healthy lifestyle choices.
Yet, it is not without its challenges. Coordinating with vendors, ensuring high employee turnout, managing logistics, and balancing budget constraints with desired outcomes can be daunting. Despite these challenges, the result is a successful event with high engagement and smooth execution.
Avoid common mistakes such as poor planning, lack of clear communication, overlooking marketing and promotion, and failing to follow up and gather feedback.
Your Health Fair Checklist
Planning a health fair requires several key components including choosing dates, coordinating with vendors, marketing, and handling logistics. It’s important to start planning at least two months in advance and to schedule a post-event follow-up.
We encourage you to download our detailed Health Fair Checklist to assist you in this process. Our team is also available to provide personalized assistance or answer any questions you may have.
Expected Outcomes and Next Steps
Once your health fair is complete, you can expect increased employee satisfaction and engagement and a positive impact on workplace culture. Feedback from the event can also provide invaluable insights for future improvements.
Key takeaways from organizing a health fair include the importance of thorough planning and communication, engaging employees and ensuring vendor satisfaction, and using feedback to continuously improve future health fairs.
Now, it's time to put these insights into action. Download our checklist, create a detailed plan for your next health fair, assign roles and responsibilities, set goals for participation and engagement, and schedule regular check-ins to monitor progress.
Wellness Days
I typically host a health fair once or twice a year, and every month, I organize what I refer to as "Wellness Days." On these days, I invite 2-3 vendors to come in and accommodate the team.
Here are the key participants:
MedSpa - They offer services such as B12 and BLipo injections. These are shots of Vitamin B12 and Lipotropic compounds. Vitamin B12 is important for nerve function and the creation of red blood cells, while Lipotropic compounds help break down fat in the liver. These injections are often used in weight loss treatments.
Supplement Vendor - They sell various products that team members may or may not be aware they need.
It is nice to note, that if team members pay for these products and services out of pocket, they are fully covered by their Health Spending Account (HSA).
Wellness Days are eagerly anticipated by the team. I'm frequently thanked for hosting this event, which benefits everyone involved. It's a true win-win!
Listen to the episode on Kathie’s Coaching Podcast
Conclusion
In conclusion, a health fair is an essential tool for promoting employee wellness within your organization. It may seem like a daunting task, but with thorough planning and the right resources, you can successfully plan a health fair that benefits your employees and your organization. We encourage you to use this guide and our checklist for your planning, and invite you to share your experiences and feedback for continuous improvement.
Start planning your health fair today. Download our Health Fair Checklist, and reach out to our team for additional resources or consultation services. Your employees' health and wellness are worth it.
Kathie Owen, Corporate Wellness Professional
Read More Corporate Wellness Articles Here
Transcript:
📍 📍 Imagine this you're 📍 an employee at a great company. And 📍 they have a health fair for their team. And you participate and 📍 you find out some things you didn't know even existed. As a corporate wellness director it's your responsibility to get 📍 the team engaged. And today I'm going to teach you one of the very best ways to engage your team. In your corporate wellness initiatives.
Welcome to my YouTube channel. My name is Kathie Owen. On this channel, we talk about corporate wellness, fitness, Reality Transurfing, and more. And today we're talking about corporate wellness and having a health fair. A health fair is so beneficial for so many reasons.
And if you're watching my channel and you follow me for fitness, I invite you to stay to the very end, because I have some revolutionary innovative ways to improve your health that are on the rise today.
Back in 2016, I had a very first health fair ever for the company. And is shifted and pivoted my role inside the company 📍 in a grand way. Why because people started seeing me as a different resource. They started to see, oh, Kathie, doesn't just do fitness because remember I was hired to run the gym and that's all I did pretty much until I started getting my entrepreneurial spirit and saying, Hey, let's try this.
Let's try this. Well, when I try to health fair, I actually won 📍 employee of the month for the company. And I was recognized as a different person inside the company. Today almost 10 years later, I am now running what I call wellness days, which is once a month. Mini micro health fair. This is so beneficial for so many reasons.
We interrupt this program to give you a quick message. Please give this 📍 video a thumbs up. It tells YouTube that this video is great for the logarithm 📍 and subscribe to our channel and hit that little bell. So you never miss a video from us on Reality Transurfing and corporate wellness. Let's get back into the episode.
This is actually one of my favorite parts about my job. Because you want to get the team engaged in your wellness initiatives. How do you do that? Well, it's not necessarily easy. It's simple, but it's not easy. And it takes strategy. It takes work and it takes innovation.
Running a health fair, like I said is not easy, but what happens is there's certain steps you want to take, you want to invite certain vendors to come in.
And what I have found is a lot of vendors are like, absolutely. They raise their hand. They'll actually call me once a year and say, Hey, I want to come to your health fair. I have several people reach out for this. 'cause it's gotten really popular. But you've got to follow some guidelines so that you don't leave anybody out or you don't forget to contact somebody.
You don't leave out. Little steps along the way. Or even the day of the health fair, I created a health fair checklist. You can download that in the show notes and description below. But what is important about a health fair? Is it improves employee engagement.
All right. I will have a link to the free resources that were recommended in today's video. In the show notes and description below. And I sure hope to see you there. Let's get back to the episode.
When I worked for the Y MCA. Back many, many years ago, we actually participated in health fairs in the cities that were surrounding. And these health fairs were really, really big, but I don't see this happening as much as it used to, especially since the pandemic, but I am invite you to switch your mindset on that because the health fairs are very beneficial and what I've started doing on my wellness days, which is a micro health fair is I invite in a med spa and the med spa comes in and offers. Their services, which they, they do have like IVs for health and wellness, but those take 45 minutes. One thing that they do is they bring in their B12 injections and these B12 injections provide energy for your team and health and vitality. And it's very popular.
I have people asking me when's the next wellness day? When are they coming back? What's coming next. And I even invited a supplement company. So in our micro health fairs, I have our pharmacy, our on site pharmacy come out. Uh, they offer health screenings. One of our employees actually found out that she had high blood pressure because of this health screening.
And this was a young girl in her early thirties. This was a pivotal move in the corporate wellness industry, because what happened was this gal found out she had high blood pressure. She took preventative measures, and now she knows what she needs to do because of our wellness days. This lights me up 📍 like a firecracker. Why? Because is exactly what I want for my team.
I want to build a healthy, happy team as best I can. To the best of my ability. And it's amazing. The transformations that take place by having a health fair. You want a diverse array of booths at your health fair that provide everything from chiropractor services. I even invite 📍 a vet to come in and they actually raise their hand. They're used to doing this and it's so much fun and it helps the company in so many different ways. So as a bonus, I'm going to share something with you.
That's revolutionary and innovative in today's world. What is that kathie? I'm so glad you asked. Biohacking. Biohacking is the future of the health industry. What is biohacking? Biohacking is. An alternative to medical healthcare. For example, instead of taking an antibiotic to help with your illness You are proactive. You learn how to do recovery treatments, you learn about red light therapy.
You learn about immune systems. So we're being proactive in our health instead of reactive. And this. Also lights me up. Like a firecracker because I'd love helping people already feel better. Before they get sick. In fact, the month of July, our health wellness day is going to be all about building a healthy immune system.
Because what I have found is team members who have children, their kids come home and bring them a sickness and they're sick for a whole week. And then. They get well, and then their kid brings home another illness and it just perpetuates. Why not be proactive and start biohacking the system and taking care of your health and wellness. And doing it for your team. Another thing that we do is our company is big on charity. And they have several different charities across the board.
And our CEO is adamant about promoting this inside the company. Different ways to work with these charities. So since I have organized a health fair, and I know how to do that. They have invited me to start in. Incorporating a charity day inside the company, which means we invite in all of our charity vendors or most of them to come have this day where the employees get to learn.
Okay. We're not just about donating money. How about time? How about effort? How about helping us do this? And. It's a win for the company. It's a win for the charity and it's a win for the team member. And I just love this. So one of my favorite things to do is set up a health fair. And in fact, I am teaching a workshop on how to set up a health fair. Exactly down to the minute details, including templates and everything, what to say to people, how to invite your favorite vendors and more, if you'd like to know more about that, please leave a comment. Health fair.
Just say health fair. DM meet comment on some of my content and my social media. Let's see if we are fit and building a health fair is good for your company. Alright, that's my episode for today. I trust that you found it helpful. If you know somebody who could benefit from this, please share it with them.
And until next time I will see you next time. Peace out and namaste. Bing!
