Promoting work environments that support employee health and wellness

Most adults spend a significant amount of time at their place of employment. The Healthy Living team is helping Minneapolis businesses and organizations create work environments that make it easy for employees to eat healthy, be physically active, and avoid the harmful effects of tobacco. To achieve this goal, we work with ten partner worksites to create healthy organizational policies and implement practices that make the healthiest choices easy and available for all employees.

Specifically, we are committed to:

• Increasing awareness among worksites of the benefits of enhancing their employee wellness policies and practices for optimum employee health.
• Assessing each worksite’s food, physical activity, tobacco, and breastfeeding environments as well as their existing policies and practices, and identifying opportunities for improvement.
• Drafting organizational policies and related action plan to improve the wellness environment in each worksite.

Current initiatives

• Partnering with the City of Minneapolis Stride Wellness Committee to plan and implement wellness strategies for employees such as:
  • Working with local farmers to offer Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) drop off for City staff
  • Launching the "It’s OK to Not Be OK" campaign to create a culture that supports and prioritizes the mental health and well-being of all employees and reduce the stigma of mental health through training and educational materials.

• Partnering with the Minneapolis Chamber of Commerce to assist 10 Minneapolis businesses in implementing healthy worksite policies and practices through a cohort model.

  • mspWellness is the result of such partnership to assist business members in creating healthier work environments. 

  • Our goal is to equip employers in Minneapolis with tools to help their employees live well and cultivate a culture of health at their workplaces.

  • Through our partnership, we meet businesses where they are at whether or not they currently have workplace wellness initiatives or are starting new.​

     

Past accomplishments 

• Completed health assessments at all worksites to identify the strengths and opportunities related to promoting health and wellness in their workplace environments.
• Created draft policies to support healthy food availability, physical activity opportunities, tobacco-free environments, and breastfeeding resources for working mothers at each worksite.
• Implemented practices at each worksite to support new health policies. For example, the staff at CAPI, a local non-profit serving the Asian American community, created a walking route map to encourage employees to walk during lunch breaks or meetings.
• The City of Minneapolis conducted listening sessions with nursing mothers (City employees) to assess the breastfeeding friendliness of the workplace, which resulted in system changes that include an inventory of all lactation spaces in City buildings, a process for accessing these spaces which have been included in the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) orientation for pregnant women.