The University of Vermont has won a Governor’s Excellence in Workplace Wellness Gold Award from the Vermont Department of Health. The Workplace Wellness Award program recognizes Vermont organizations that have demonstrated an established wellness strategy promoting healthy environments and supporting the well-being of their employees.
The department has offered Workplace Wellness Awards in the past, which UVM has won, but this is the first year it is offering awards at Rising Star, Bronze, Silver and Gold levels.
“It’s an honor to be included in a group of Vermont employers who’ve made it a priority to promote employee wellness,” said Wanda Heading Grant, vice president of UVM’s Division of Human Resources, Diversity and Multicultural Affairs.
“We’ve always offered a wide range of wellness programing at UVM,” she said. “But in the past few years we’ve put new emphasis on making employees aware of these many options and making it easy for them to access them. This award, and the ones before it, show we’re on the right track.”
Over the past two years, UVM developed and launched a comprehensive Employee Wellnesss website, hired a dedicated wellness staff person, Britta MacApline, and put in place a Wellness Ambassadors program of over 70 staff and faculty ambassadors who are charged with keeping their departments informed of new and existing wellness initiatives.
The new website organizes the university’s offerings into seven types of wellness programs: emotional, environmental, financial, intellectual, physical, social and spiritual and itemizes the available programming and community partners for each category.
“Making wellness a priority is a true win-win for UVM,” said Heading-Grant. “Research shows that employees who participate in wellness programs are happier, healthier and more productive. That’s a benefit to both the employee and the university.”
This Vermont Department of Health and Governor’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports will present the awards on March 21 at the 2019 Worksite Wellness conference at the DoubleTree Hilton in Burlington.
For more information about UVM’s wellness programs, visit Employee Wellness.
Source: UVM News