Sparking Change – Top 3 Tips For Employee Wellness From a 25-Year Industry Veteran

Employee wellness has rapidly changed. 25-year industry veteran Kim Baker shares her top 3 insights to engaging organizations and individuals on this week's Well Within 10 Podcast (available anywhere you get your podcasts).

Kim Baker is the Director of Wellness for Northern Kentucky University, with two-and-a-half decades of experience in the health and wellness industry, and a background in clinical exercise physiology and corporate wellness.

Kim is dedicated to building, supporting, and sustaining a culture of health and wellbeing within an organization. She's also committed to guiding and inspiring individuals and teams on their personal journey of holistic wellness. 

Watch the full interview below.

"I've found that WELCOA's (Wellness Council of America), 7 benchmarks are an incredibly useful place to use as a guide for when I'm building wellness strategies" said Kim. Today we're going to discuss the three I think are crucial for anyone just starting along their corporate wellness journey.

1. Committed and aligned leadership – at all levels. All leaders must create space and endorse wellness in their organizations. Middle managers may play the most crucial role as they, themselves, may benefit from a new approach to managing their wellness at work. 
   
   Tip: Allow employees to create solutions for a more well-work environment and present back to leaders for endorsement. This will breed a culture of support and psychological safety.
   
   
2. Build a culture of wellness. Corporate wellness isn't just about lunch-hour programming, it is most effective when woven into the fabric of the organization.
   
   Tip: Make wellness a part of your daily activities. Begin meetings with a mindfulness exercise. Ask employees what systems/processes create unnecessary friction and remove them (or work to alleviate as much as possible). Empower employees to engage in wellness offerings and promote wellness as a leadership quality.
   
   
3. Approach wellness in a holistic manner. By focusing on the whole-self, organizations are able to look beyond exercise and what you eat and support the root cause of challenges in employees' lives. Stress can significantly impact employee engagement and performance – organizations need to think differently about how to approach solutions.
   
   Tip: Through a partnership with Christ Hospital and WISe Wellness Guild, NKU supports the whole-self wellness of their employees while supporting woman and minority-owned businesses. Sparking Change offers programming on self-awareness, gratitude, the science of stress and more. Sparking Change offers an innovative approach to DE&I-led wellness programming.

Learn more about Sparking Change and how NKU is leading wellness in academia. 

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