Employee Wellness Training or a Single Risk Course?
This course teaches a manager how to run alongside a wellness program. The courses next to it each take one specific workplace risk end to end.
- Employee Wellness Training. The page you are on. Program pillars, manager responsibilities, engagement barriers and the legal boundaries.
- Workplace Violence Prevention Training. Threats, warning signs, reporting and response, treated as a hazard rather than a benefit. View the Workplace Violence Prevention Training
- Drug and Alcohol Awareness for Supervisors. Reasonable suspicion, documentation and referral, the other conversation supervisors get handed. View the Drug and Alcohol Awareness for Supervisors
- Ergonomics Training for the Office Worker. Workstation setup and strain prevention, the physical side this course only names in passing. View the Ergonomics Training for the Office Worker
Why Employee Wellness Participation Has to Stay Voluntary
The legal centre of this course is a single word, voluntary, and four statutes that decide what it means on a Monday morning.
- The ADA. A program carrying disability related inquiries or medical examinations counts as voluntary only on the terms at 29 CFR 1630.14(d): participation is not mandated, coverage is not withheld, no adverse action follows a refusal, and a written notice explains what is collected and why.
- GINA. 29 CFR 1635.8 bars an employer from requesting genetic information, and family medical history is genetic information, so a health questionnaire that asks about a parent or sibling is a problem before anyone answers it.
- The reward ceiling. Rewards in a health contingent program are capped at 30 percent of the cost of coverage, rising to 50 percent where the program addresses tobacco use, under 29 CFR 2590.702(f)(5). Participatory programs carry no such ceiling.
- No consequences. The course then reduces all of it to something a manager can hold in their head: someone who says no gets no follow up question, no note in a file and no change in how they are treated.
Everything else the course teaches, the encouragement and the recognition and the culture work, sits inside that boundary rather than beside it.
