Employee Health Newsletter
Employee Health Newsletter: Overview
An employee health newsletter is a document used within a health promotion program to promote health among a corporations employees. There are no standards with respect to employee health newsletter design, content, page count and/or tone. As a result newsletter vary widely from corporation to corporation.
Newsletters will often include health tips, healthy recipes, safety related articles and tips and information about upcoming health programs. For the health newsletter to be effective they ought to be short (1-2 pages at most), easy to read and should have a positive tone to them.
Employee Health Newsletter: Purpose
Corporations use them to promote health among their employees. Corporations hope that the health education, awareness and health promotion aspects of the newsletters will help encourage and/or enable employees to live healthier lives. There is little research to show that a newsletter of this type has any impact on worker productivity or health care costs, but they are a pervasive part of most health programs.
Employee Health Newsletter: Frequency
Frequency of distribution is up to the corporation. Often it is dictated by the size of a corporations health budget. Other times it is based on employee preference. Nonetheless, frequency ranges from daily to annually.
Employee Health Newsletter: Distribution
Corporations distribute newsletters in a host of different ways including via: mail, email, posting it on employee bulletin boards, posting it on the companies website, posting it on their corporation's intranet, as a paycheck stuffer and by hand delivering it. The method used depends on the size of a corporations health budget, corporation preference and employee preference.
Employee Health Newsletter: Source
Employee health newsletters are usually either bought by the corporation (as a standalone service or as part of a health program), created in-house or they've found a free health newsletter to use.
Buying company newsletters can be expensive and are not likely to see a big enough ROI to justify the cost. Most newsletters which are purchased come in hard copy format, thus requiring that they be distributed by hand or via mail - both of which add more to the cost of the program.
Newsletters created in-house can take a tremendous amount of time to produce (far more than expected) and often look like something a junior high school student created - especially if they've used clipart. Is that really the image a corporation wants to portray with their employees?
Free employee health newsletter sources would seem to be a great option, but you have to be very careful when selecting a source for free newsletters. All too often a so called newsletter is nothing more than an advertisement for a corporation or product. So, be sure to review the following:
- Is there a defined editorial policy?
- Is source date provided for information contained in the articles?
- If advertising is permitted, is it clearly identified?
- Do you have to sign up in order to receive the newsletter? If you do then there ought to be a defined process for unsubscribing?
- Is the companies contact information provided?
- If registration is required for an electronic newsletter - is there a SPAM policy and privacy policy?
Free Employee Health Newsletter
Remember, you don't have to develop your own employee health newsletter - we offer them at no charge for you to use within your wellness program. Our free newsletter archive can be found here: Free Employee Health Newsletter Archive
