Wellness & Engagement
I am pleased to share with you that the American Psychological Association’s (APA) Center for Organizational Excellence has chosen a client, Team Horner, for a 2015 Psychologically Healthy Workplace Award. Team Horner, the largest private pool-supply manufacturer and distributor in the world created and implemented a company–wide. True Colors health and wellness program called “Color Me Healthy” The APA award is given to an organization whose workplace fosters employee health and well-being, while enhancing organizational performance and productivity. It is for employers who are creating workplace that do more than just improve productivity- they build a strong, vibrant organizational culture that supports the company itself.
Color Me Healthy is an integrated, systemic approach that improves community engagement, communication, emotional and physical health, while also creating a culture where employees feel valued and cared for. All of these factors work together to contribute to an employees’ well-being.
According to Kim Kent, Team Horners’ True Colors Certified Trainer and Wellness Coach who implemented Color Me Healthy. “The first Step was offering the True Colors personality assessment, a fun, interactive and practical tool used to foster healthy, productive relationships. People discovered their shades of blue, green, gold and orange, They learned more about themselves and how to better communicate with other personality types. Mixed –Color groups were asked to come up with wellness programs to appeal to each of the personality types. This process created a strong and sustainable foundation to encourage good communication among teammates on an ongoing basis.
“Volunteers became the Color Me Healthy team, the group responsible for choosing which programs to implement . Color Me Healthy teams were formed (in our various offices).”… “Each team represents very different populations and is able to create programs, communication methods and schedules that best suit the teammates they represent.”
They used a method of mine called “ the ideal process” to develop the framework to build and implement the initiative. This process is used to enable an organization to create and implement an initiative that is perfectly tailored the organizations own population.
As the APA reports : “the genius of Color Me Healthy is that it is bottom-up- teammates themselves brainstorms the types of well-being programs they want. Volunteers come together and form teams in different areas of the company of focus on the kinds of initiatives that are best-suited to different populations . For instance, programs appealing to workers at the company’s manufacturing plant are not necessarily the same as those desired by its national sales team.”
Kim states,” One of the most successful programs offered team-wide is one to-one wellness coaching….
Coaches use True Colors to tie in that knowledge to help their Horner clients. Participants have shared testimonials about their successes including less stress, weight loss, more energy, improved fitness and better communication.”
Kim summarizes, “Color Me Healthy is the driving force behind creating a culture of well –being in Team Horner. This initiative has certainly helped to foster a Psychologically healthy workplace for all.”
This punctuates my premise that for an organization to improve all the psychological factors that contribute to its success, and organization must engage its employees through their intrinsic personality differences. In other words disengagement from any organizational initiative is the result of a lack of understanding of what people need to contribute to deliver their very best
~ Don Lowry - Creator, True Colors