Proposal: Integrating A Wellness Program For Amazon Canada

Brief outline of Amazon

Amazon has emerged out to be one of the most popular e-commerce website globally. The company was established by Jeff Bezos in the year 1994 and deals primarily with cloud computing and electronic commerce (Amazon.ca, 2018). The company has its headquarters at Seattle, Washington (Amazon.ca, 2018). Initially the organization started its journey as an online book store and video streaming website but soon it emerged out as an e-commerce website housing all major commodities.

It should be noted here that Amazon has separate retail websites for USA, UK, Germany, France, Ireland, Canada, Italy, Spain, Australia, Netherlands, Japan, Mexico, Italy, China, Brazil, Singapore, Turkey and India (Amazon.ca, 2018). With reference to the statistical data collected from the official website, as on 2017,

the company’s net profit was equivalent to US $ 3.033 billion (Amazon.ca, 2018). The business strategy adopted by the company is based upon leveraging technological criticalities for the success of the business coupled with a cost leadership strategy so as to deliver an amazing shopping experience to the customers (Amazon.ca, 2018). The organization stresses upon the continuous improvement of customer experience and focuses on the maintenance of a performance driven organizational culture. This leads to poor physical and mental health conditions of the employees which can only be addressed through a wellness program.

Needs Analysis:

In this context it must be mentioned that the customer support department of the organization forms the most integral part of the system as it serves as bridge between the company’s vision and the customer expectation. In close association with the organization Amazon, Canada it can be said that the employees are too stressed and often resort to cigarette smoking during their shift hours to alleviate themselves from the stress.

Excessive smoking is gradually leading to the deterioration of the physical health of the employees which is being reflected through the frequent sick leaves dropped in by the employees of the organization. In order to address the seriousness of this issue, this paper intends to propose a wellness plan that can effectively help in the cessation of the smoking habit and consequently promote positive health.

The need to incorporate the smoking program is to make the employees aware about the negative implication of smoking and to promote positive health and wellness among the employees (Mattke et al., 2013). The gap that could be identified was the failure of the senior management to distribute the work evenly among the employees. This resulted in improper distribution of work load and stress due to which some employees feel more stressed and pressurized than others. The senior management needs to take note of the existing gap in the organizational culture and incorporate a wellness plan. The wellness plan would be devised for the sub-ordinate employees who are working in the sales department. The following figure describes in detail the content that would be covered through the Needs Analysis.

Content:

Research studies show that an Amazon employee on an average works for more than 45 hours a week (Amazon.ca, 2018). Studies further reveal that employees at administrative posts work for 60 hours a week (Amazon.ca, 2018). The long working hours clearly reflect the massive work pressure faced by the employees (Goetzel, 2014). It should be mentioned here that employees often resort to frequent smoke-breaks during their working hours to relieve themselves from stress.

Business strategy and organizational culture

Frequent smoke breaks affect employee’s efficiency to manage the work within the shift hours and hence the employee has to work even after the shift hours to complete a task. Further, smoking is extremely injurious to health and is tightly linked to a number of physical health disorders such as cancer, upper respiratory tract infections and asthma to name a few (Halpern et al., 2015); (Cao et al., 2013). It should also be noted that employees frequently drop in sick leaves on account of respiratory infections which is primarily caused due to smoking and allergy. Therefore, it is important to design an appropriate wellness plan in order to promote positive health of the employees.

According to Rongen et al. (2014), a successful Organization needs to focus on the maintenance of the physical health of the employees so as to reinforce a positive and healthy work atmosphere. The smoking cessation program would help in effectively improving the performance of the employees by enhancing the concentration power, stamina and physical fitness (Kaspin et al., 2013); (Pronk 2014). This proposed wellness initiative would help the employees stay motivated against smoking and promote fitness. It would serve as a positive challenge that would render a healthier workforce working for the organization. The following topics would be covered in the smoking cessation program to motivate employees to quit smoking:

Topics	Rationale
Smoking fogs the mind	Studies show that smoking clouds the mind and deteriorates the reason ability of an individual which might lead to cognitive impairment and dementia in later life (Pronk, 2014).
Smoking can cause diabetes	Studies show that smokers have a 44% chance to develop Diabetes that non-smokers (Kaspin et al., 2013).
Smoking causes infections	Smoking enhances the susceptibility to develop respiratory tract infections
Smoking can cause erectile dysfunction	Smokers are at a high risk of developing erectile dysfunction than non-smokers
Smoking can lead to wrinkles	Smoking contributes to the formation of premature facial wrinkles
Smoking hastens menopause	Studies show that smoking marks an early onset of menopause in women.
Smoking impairs vision	Smokers are at a three times risk of developing blurred vision
Smoking leads to osteoporosis	Smoking has been invariably linked to cause osteoporosis in both the sexes
Smoking impairs the digestive system	Smoking harms the digestive system and causes peptic ulcers and gallstones
Smoking can impair sleep pattern	Nicotine disrupts the normal sleeping pattern in smokers (Goetzel et al., 2014)
Smoking leads to cancer	Smoking has been linked to a number of cancers
Smoking shortens life	Non-smokers have been reported to live longer than smokers

The smoking cessation program would be stringently monitored for a time period of six months. During the entire tenure the documentation would be thoroughly maintained that would keep a track about the percentage of employee participation and the monthly progress. At the end of the training program, the outcome would be measured on the basis of two evaluation measures. The first would consider the amount of employee participation. Employee-participation lower than 75% would reflect the failure in satisfying the first objective of the program. The second would consider the percentage of tobacco free/healthy individuals after the completion of the program. A percentage lower than at least 35% of tobacco-free individuals would reflect the failure of the devised wellness program.

Training Design and Delivery:

The smoking cessation program would be based upon two defined objectives that would require training at three phases. The three phases would include imparting training on-job, off-job and reinforcing a technology-based training. The structure and planning of the training program is discussed as under:

Goals	On-job training	Off-job training	Technology based training
· To spread awareness about smoking and its negative implication on physical health · To create a working environment of fit and healthy individuals	· To create awareness through informative posters and pamphlets · To create awareness through videos on the negative impact of smoking that would appear on the screens of the employee’s portal when they log in · To make provision for stress candies and stress-busting balls to offer an alternative for smoking and motivate the employees to quit smoking	· Organizing informative seminars on the negative implication of smoking on physical health · To support employees quit smoking through counseling · To provide anti-nicotine cigarettes to chain-smokers in combination with counseling to help them quit smoking	· To equip the employees with a nicotine tracker and impart training on how to use the device. The tracker would effectively detect the percentage of nicotine consumed on every day basis · Based on the tracker information devising a wellness incentive to fit workers (Halpern et al., 2015)

The wellness program would incorporate two major objectives. The first would deal with imparting education and awareness about smoking, passive smoking and its negative implication on the health of the people and their near and dear ones. The second would encompass of creating a healthy work environment. The training can be managed in-house but would require the purchase of relevant goods and would involve an expenditure of approximately US $ 200 a month. The wellness trainers would be contacted from various NGOs who are closely associated with rehabilitation programs against substance abuse and smoking and an offer would be placed to recruit them.

Evaluation:

According to Horwitz et al. (2013), surveys and questionnaire serve as an integral evaluation tool that helps in the determination of the feasibility and success of the program. In order to determine the success rate of the designed wellness program, a structured questionnaire would be designed by the review committee. In this context, it should also be stated that a review committee would be set up.

Needs analysis

The rationale behind the creation of a review committee is to exclusively include an evaluation committee who would ensure that the wellness program is executed in a proper manner (Rongen et al., 2014).  The review board would comprise of the wellness program coordinator along with the trainers, a community nurse and two health care professionals. An elaborate questionnaire along with a compact survey form would be drafted by the review board. It would comprise of structured questions with yes/no response. On the other hand the survey form would comprise questions that would consist of a grading scale.

In addition to this, to retrieve personal response and judge the level of satisfaction in the employees, the Human Resource team of the organization would hold a one-on-one session. In this session, the employees would be interviewed where they would be asked semi-structured questions. The questions would be broadly based upon judging the experience of the employees who participated in the wellness program.

Some of the questions would include, “how and what they felt before the commencement of the program? To what extent has the program made a difference in the life of the employees after its successful completion? What are the positive or negative implications on the mental and physical health of the employees after the completion of the program? Would they vote in positive for the commencement of such programs in future?” The gathered responses would help in understanding the impact level created by the wellness program and would direct further designing of such programs.

Conclusion:

The evaluation report would effectively help in understanding the psychological perception of the employees towards the wellness program. It would help in identifying the strengths and weakness of the program (Horwitz et al., 2013). Accordingly, steps would be undertaken to effectively make amendments and continue the wellness plan or withdraw it permanently (Ammendolia et al., 2016). Studies reveal that other key issues are often identified during a wellness program that affects the physical or mental health of the employees (Rongen et al., 2014). Taking note of the identified factors, the future programs can be designed appropriately to meet the need of the employees and promote a healthy work environment.

References

Amazon.ca. (2018). Amazon.ca: Online shopping in Canada – books, electronics, Kindle, home & garden, DVDs, tools, music, health & beauty, watches, baby, sporting goods & more. Retrieved from https://www.amazon.ca/

Ammendolia, C., Côté, P., Cancelliere, C., Cassidy, J. D., Hartvigsen, J., Boyle, E., … & Amick, B. (2016). Healthy and productive workers: using intervention mapping to design a workplace health promotion and wellness program to improve presenteeism. BMC Public Health, 16(1), 1190.

Cao, H., Jiang, J., Oh, L. B., Li, H., Liao, X., & Chen, Z. (2013). A Maslow’s hierarchy of needs analysis of social networking services continuance. Journal of Service Management, 24(2), 170-190.

Goetzel, R. Z., Henke, R. M., Tabrizi, M., Pelletier, K. R., Loeppke, R., Ballard, D. W., … & Serxner, S. (2014). Do workplace health promotion (wellness) programs work?. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 56(9), 927-934.

Halpern, S. D., French, B., Small, D. S., Saulsgiver, K., Harhay, M. O., Audrain-McGovern, J., … & Volpp, K. G. (2015). Randomized trial of four financial-incentive programs for smoking cessation. New England Journal of Medicine, 372(22), 2108-2117.

Horwitz, J. R., Kelly, B. D., & DiNardo, J. E. (2013). Wellness incentives in the workplace: cost savings through cost shifting to unhealthy workers. Health Affairs, 32(3), 468-476.

Kaspin, L. C., Gorman, K. M., & Miller, R. M. (2013). Systematic review of employer-sponsored wellness strategies and their economic and health-related outcomes. Population health management, 16(1), 14-21.

Mattke, S., Liu, H., Caloyeras, J., Huang, C. Y., Van Busum, K. R., Khodyakov, D., & Shier, V. (2013). Workplace wellness programs study. Rand health quarterly, 3(2).

Pronk, N. (2014). Best practice design principles of worksite health and wellness programs. ACSM’s Health & Fitness Journal, 18(1), 42-46.

Rongen, A., Robroek, S. J., Van Ginkel, W., Lindeboom, D., Altink, B., & Burdorf, A. (2014). Barriers and facilitators for participation in health promotion programs among employees: a six-month follow-up study. BMC Public Health, 14(1), 573.