Health and Wellness

 Identify the topic for your formal report. Explain how this topic could address a problem or situation in your organization. Who would be the audience for this report? What benefits might they receive from the research and report?

How do I introduce alternative health and wellness at work?  That is the big question for me because for the last four years of my life I have seen a huge transformation take place and I am at a point where I feel that I want to share what I have learned. People go to the doctor and have a 15 minute appointment and a prescription is written for the patient with little knowledge of who that person is, what they have experienced in the past, or how they feel and think about themselves. Some people go to a doctor and explain what their symptom is and when someone goes to a traditional MD the doctor will work on treating that symptom, but with energy work practitioners the person will get treated on a holistic basis.

When visiting an energy work practitioner you may feel a little nervous, but that is normal because you are trying something new and usually people get recommended by a friend or some people who are very sick will seek something other than the traditional route. When seeking out an energy work practitioner you will most likely come into an office where you feel a sense of peace, calm and open mindedness that usually is not found in traditional medical practice. The first thing that will happen is that an intake will take place and depending on what type of practitioner you are seeing the intake could last more than an hour. These special practitioners care about the person who they are meeting with and want to know what is happening to this person and their feelings, thoughts and questions are opened up for both and notes will be made because each session will build off of each other.

Many people ask themselves how do I achieve balance in my life when I am stressed out and overwhelmed with what is happening in my life right now? People assume that they have to accept what is going on in their lives or their bodies because it is normal for them and if it is normal why should it change? In doing years of energy work with several different practitioners I have learned how to work through the old stuff and make room for new energy and I have dropped old patterns and behaviors off the top of the cliff.  

That is just a little background information because this may be new to some of you and it is a good idea to start off with the basics and energy work practitioners will help their practice member learn how to build new strategies to help them heal themselves. This is a huge idea because most people think that they need to have whatever hurts taken out and removed, but little does that person know that the pain could go away by dealing with what happened in the past. Our bodies remember our past experiences even if they happened when we were little, our bodies remembers how we felt, what we thought about what happened and those memories can become “stuck” in our bodies and show up as pain later.

My goal is to introduce to my co-workers and hopefully do a little marketing for my friends businesses while spreading interest in health and wellness. I started to think what would I be like if I did not know what I have learned from energy work? Would I feel disconnected and unbalanced? Some people are walking around at work in a haze because of all the stress that is happening to them in their daily lives, job loss is huge, money stress for some never ends and dealing with family and other responsibilities on top of that can really send a person off balance.

            While researching online I found so many great articles, and for me my issue is going to be narrowing my topic because my goal is to be an introduction to energy work not some mass movement to change the way my co-workers think. In my search for a really inspiring quote or two I found a health care practitioner who was speaking to business leaders, and advising them on health and wellness and how to introduce it among other different mind-body and soul modalities to their employees. It was nice to see someone from the alternative healthcare field advising company owners and top management that there are other ways to become more productive other than working late nights and long hours.

In Ryan Diener’s article Renew Connection to Ourself –Making a Commitment to Self Care he asks business leaders, “Is efficiency not the hallmark of any good business? Too often, I have seen business leaders break down in the face of rising work hours and increased stress. Working efficiently means maintaining a healthy level of balance, which is often easier, said than done. We all know that we can maintain a healthy level of balance by following the three cardinal rules of health – eat well, exercise and get enough sleep?" (Diener, 2010). Just think what an influence this acupuncturist who is the co-founder of Holistic Health Associates can have on powerful business leaders and the positive effect it will have on those who follow his advice.

My next goal is to introduce research to Human Resources and show them what results I got from the survey and explain to them the benefits that have been proven by other companies who have started a health and wellness program. There is so much information on the web about the benefits that people can receive from doing energy work and three of those things are a sense of balance to their life, better productivity, less time away from work and lower cost for claims than the cost of traditional medicine, energy work is effective and not very expensive, and heals the person from head to toe and does not focus on just on the symptom.

Employer’s health care costs and productivity losses are related to employee lifestyle choices (Desmond, 2009). I found a great article that gave me this surprising information and I believe that if people were more aware of their options that they would choose the less expensive route and take the holistic approach to healing instead. Instead of spending money on insurance for unhealthy lifestyle habits for employees after starting a wellness program the money would be put to better use for education of alternative health and hiring more people instead of cutting jobs to save money.

I think there is still much to learn and I am excited to jump into this topic.

Desmond, S. (2009, August 7). Using wellness programs to reduce health care costs. Retrieved from  http://hrhero.com/hl/articles/2009/08/07/using-wellness-programs-to-reduce-health-care-costs/

Diener, R. (2010, November 1). Renewing connection to. ourselves—making a. commitment to self care . Retrieved from http://www.hhamd.com/pdf/ryan_self_care.pdf

Bad News

The holidays that we will pay you for are Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years, Fourth of July but unfortunately not the day after Thanksgiving although you will have that day off it will not be a paid day for you.

This was in an email that I received from the temp service because I was told by the company I temped for that we would have the day off after Thanksgiving but because it was not going to be paid that I would lose out on pay that day. By explaining to me that we have many days that the company considers as paid time and putting it first it did not seem as much as a letdown just more like another day off.

Sometimes people rely on email so much that the message could come off the wrong way and I believe that if you send a bad news email it would be a good idea to follow up with that person face-to-face. If someone was giving an update that sales figures where down then the person could also end with that note that even though sales are down that we have an opportunity with each customer that comes in to provide excellent service. When I worked in retail during the winter it was a slow time but if you had the one customer who wanted to shop and not have to bother shopping for months than you knew the potential for a sale was good. Many times emails are sent from district managers to cheer up and keep hopes up that things will get better and a good manager will be able to encourage their staff that things will get better.

Nobody likes to receive bad news but if you do it with an uplifting and positive manner than people will know that the news is bad but they can take a proactive approach to try to change the situation. Our book, tells us to end on a positive note, “Close your document with a positive statement…whatever you write do not bring the bad news up again” (Roebuck, 2006, p.89).

I hate listening to someone whine and complain that one person could bring a team down if people listen to him or her long enough, who needs someone with a sour disposition? When bad news is shared people may want to talk about it instead of moving on or trying to come up with a solution to the problem.

Roebuck, D. B. (2006). Improving business communication skills.  Upper Saddle River, N.J.:

            Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Attention Getter

Attention:

One way to grab someone’s attention is to come up with a quick one line sentence that will make that person stop and look at the message that you are sending. Our book talks about when a reader is “hooked” they will then continue to read past the first line and “with an attention getting statement, you capture your readers’ attention” (Roebuck, 2006, p. 103).

The first line of your cover letter or resume has to hook your reader so they will continue to read if you lose the readers interest too soon it will go on the pile of I will read it later… It is just as important to choose a font and a color that will be easy for your reader because sometimes people want to use fancy fonts in their signature that is very hard to read and is annoying to the reader.

When you read a good book what is the first thing that you look at? The title or the picture on the cover or do you flip to the back of the book and read what the story is about. I do all three and I find my favorite author’s website so I will be able to make a list of what other books she has written.

Interest:

How do I maintain someone’s interest? I make sure what I write makes sense to both myself and the reader and this is where I “introduce my main selling point by stating a benefit, filling a need, or showing distinct advantage” (Roebuck, 2006, p. 104). People want to read something that is exciting, short, to the point and if there is a common interest than that person is more likely to feel more interested in reading the memo or cover letter. If I am writing a memo for cyclists in my club or an article for my clubs publication called Pedal Talk, people already have an interest in cycling and they know my style of writing is upbeat so they will want to read what I have to say. No matter what the topic is I can draw any reader to what I want to say because I do not sound snooty or use words that will make me appear to be arrogant. Confidence and arrogance are two separate things wouldn’t you agree?

Desire:

What makes the reader want to continue reading my memo or cover letter? What is in it for them, what service can I provide, will I be the better candidate, did something catch their eye with the layout of the memo? Desire takes them to the next step which is action.

Action:

Action is the goal of the memo or my cover letter. Contact information is given in this section and if it is a memo the information could pertain to an event, meeting or an appointment, it is a special reminder of something that person needs to do and depending on how the memo is sent that person can hold on to it to refer back to. For a cover letter the action can be the information that is given for the employer to contact that person and sometimes the applicant will put in a date that they will follow up with the potential employer.

Roebuck, D. B. (2006). Improving business communication skills.  Upper Saddle River,

            N.J.: Pearson/Prentice Hall.

Private Information

When I worked at Long Term Care Partners, who have a government contract and are administrators for federal benefits and as part of our training we had to take many online training modules and pass a test at the end. There are so many strict rules that we as a company have to follow in order to protect our customer’s personal information and limited information can be given through an email. It is important to follow the rules with someone’s identity and to protect each customer that we have strict rules that we need to follow when communicating with them. Whether it is over the phone or by email we must be aware of what our limitations are and today I helped a gentlemen who is stationed in Iraq learn what his options are for helping him solve the problem he had. Since he is in Iraq and probably does not have a lot of time to spend communicating with us I sent him a certificate of permission that he could send our office that gives his wife permission to speak on his behalf. If she called up without this authorization in his file then we would have to insist that he gets in touch with us or fill out the form.

I am on the email team so we are the first point of contact for people who are surfing the website called Benefeds and we are only allowed to advise them on what to do. We use templates that are already made up and we answer everything and anything that has to do with any type of insurance even if the question does not apply to dental and vision we come up with something. We cannot go in and make any changes to their information that person has to call up to update us of any changes that cannot be done over the computer. Sometimes people lock themselves out and contact us and think we will just go in and unlock their account because they asked us to do it. We must ask them to call us and let them know that the customer service reps. will be able to answer their questions in more detail.

We have to follow the Hippa Privacy Act and there are different levels on fines depending on what laws have been broken, in our training class I learned that if a breach affects more than 500 people of any particular state, notice must also be provided to the media (Benefeds Training, 2010). Health and Human Services will also have to be notified as well and we have a privacy officer who will determine if an incident is an actual privacy breech and whether individuals, HHS or the media must be contacted (Benefeds Training, 2010). The officer has to figure out three things: Was it innocent access? Was it innocent internal disclosure? Is retention of the information is possible?

We must be ethical with how we handle someone’s personal information but if someone is not honest they may steal information from that person about their medical records, where they live, banking information, anything you can think of we have access to and an example of unethical communication would be using a person’s personal information for their own means. We are trained in security safety and many of my co-workers have worked at another call center and we had a contract with the government to do customer service for passport information. So most of us are used to having a high level of security and people would get spoken to if we did not follow the strict rules and usually the first time is just a warning.

Because the information that I learned was from a training session I just realized that I cannot cite the source I used to locate the information I shared because I would be breaking the rules of my contract. Some of you may work for a federal agency or have heard of Benefeds before and I wish you luck if you need to change your rate plans during open season.

Communication is Important

Identify how you can use the communications process to ensure effective communications. What technologies are currently used to enhance the effectiveness of communications today? What causes miscommunications?

How do I insure I have effective communication with the people I encounter and work with? I pay attention and listen to what they have to say. Even if I disagree with what someone say’s I still will hear them out and listen with an objective ear. There are so many communications types that the book has talked about this week which include verbal, non-verbal, using technology to communicate with each other and written work that we submit to a boss or a co-worker.

Interpersonal communication is important and working with many different types of people means for me to see what their communication style is and work from there to decide how I want to interact with them. I really enjoyed reading in chapter one about personality differences because I want to learn how to deal with people better who might be on the little annoying side or the opposite of me. I like to speak up for myself and ask questions but this is not the case with some of my new co-workers. I like to ask questions about how I can do the job better and sometimes I have had to ask questions that the whole team was afraid to ask. Using email is a great way to communicate with a boss or a supervisor without drawing attention to yourself or the situation.

Miscommunication can come from so many different directions I feel that sometimes people perceive that there is a problem when there really is not one and when they interact with someone that person will be responding as if there was really a problem. Miscommunication also takes place when someone does not accept responsibility for what they have done and makes it appear that they were not involved or it was someone else’s fault. These types of issues can really kinder a relationship or cause unneeded confusion or aggravation to you and your co-workers. People need to learn to own their own mistakes and learn from it and not do it again, but some people do not realize their communication patterns that they have when they interact with people at work.

We have so many ways that we can communicate with each other and sometimes I wonder with all these different hand held devices there are that do we forget how to communicate with each other face to face? How many times have you noticed someone check out and you have lost their attention? I think we have a shorter attention span and want to be quicker and we assume that we will have a quicker response time. How many times have you caught a co-worker texting, responding to an email, receiving a phone call and they either stay in their seat and talk or they walk away from their desk? I feel that people become disconnected from each other with all of this technology that surrounds us every day.

I love to use email and at work I am on an email team and throughout my day I am copying and pasting templates onto an email and then I send it out to the customer. Sometimes in an email the person may feel like the response they are getting is confusing or impersonal so that means my role of the sender means breaking down the information and cutting and pasting certain sections of templates and not the whole thing. People may feel overwhelmed with too much information using and by using a heading followed by the information helps to break up a very long email.

I think the most popular ways that people communicate where I work is by email, I have seen people have face to face meetings and I think that people feel that both are equally important. I am on the low tech end, but I know a lot of people have hand held technology and can use phones with flip screens which hold the same amount of information a regular computer can. Typical ways to communicate information to a group is by using web conferences, team meetings with slide shows, sending emails using a distribution list so that only certain groups are the receivers.

Just out of curiosity what are your favorite types of technology that you regularly use to communicate with the people in your life? I have a cell phone, but only use it once and awhile and one morning I noticed that when I pulled out my lunch bag from the freezer that my phone was tucked into one of the pockets. Yes, it still worked and the point is I really did not miss it too much because my communication is mostly done on the internet and if I did not have a computer I would feel lost. What about you is there something that you use that you can give up for just a day or two and be fine?