What You Need to Know About Being a Corporate Health Professional

Corporate fitness roles allow healthcare and fitness professionals to make a difference in the lives of individuals in ways that few other roles can.

In this post, we’ll look at the different advantages a corporate fitness professional experiences in their career.

Why You Should Consider a Career in Corporate Fitness

Corporate fitness professionals are on the frontline of addressing health concerns and reducing the risk for chronic conditions.

As a corporate fitness professional, you interact with individuals who might not otherwise take an active role in their health, giving you an unparalleled opportunity to make a real difference in their lives.

Corporate fitness professionals have the freedom to create tailored programs that address the most relevant health issues in a specific population. It’s satisfying to see your work have a real impact as the programs you create become popular and become cultural pillars in a corporate environment. Corporate fitness professionals get to deeply understand a specific population and create programming just for them, which leads to greater utilization of the programs.

Involvement in the corporate world immediately opens more learning opportunities that reach far beyond fitness and into business operations, management, and company growth. If you are bold enough to ask questions, step outside your comfort zone, and push yourself to engage with business strategy, you will have unique career opportunities as you participate deeper in the corporate world.

A day in the life of a corporate fitness professional can include creative meetings about innovative wellness programming, interactions with a variety of employee groups to engage them in your programs, education about how to better meet the needs of certain populations, and countless opportunities to improve the health of the employees you serve.

Corporate fitness requires you to find out the best ways to support your employees, which will vary at every location. The need to be self -motivated and efficiently perform your daily tasks is essential. You will also have a consistent schedule, which is basically unheard of in the healthcare and fitness industries. Having a consistent schedule will also give you time to be more creative in your work. From the schedule to the population, everything about the corporate fitness world encourages creativity, which in turn leads to effective outcomes. If you want to do your best work as a fitness professional and see real results in a wide spectrum of a population, corporate fitness is for you.

Health and Wellness Coaching Can Shape Happier Employees

Coaches can help address many forms of health. Exercise and nutrition, stress management, weight management, and sleep are all common lifestyle habits that coaches can provide guidance for. In addition, chronic condition coaching allows patients to manage conditions such as hypertension, asthma, arthritis or diabetes. Doing so will not only help to prevent a more serious illness or condition from developing, but will also allow the patient to feel their best and live life fully.

A health coach can assist in identifying behaviors or conditions that may result in serious health risks through biometric screenings and Health Risk Assessments. Together, the health coach and patient review these results to determine specific health concerns and discuss goals that the patient is hoping to achieve. Through Motivational Interviewing, the health coach can inspire patients to make healthy choices by asking about what is working well for them, what health goals they wish to achieve, and how important those goals are. Designing a wellness plan that aligns with these behaviors and personal values will help the patient successfully manage their health and achieve personal goals.

Make Time for Each Patient

Designating adequate time with each patient is essential for building a successful wellness plan. Whether in-person or telephonically, it is important for coaches to make themselves available for valuable discussion and check-ins on a regular basis. While this can be flexible according to the patient’s needs and availability, 20-30 minute meetings typically allow for a full review of progress, planning for next-steps, and opportunity to discuss educational material or resources. Setting a mutual plan for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly appointments can also help to maintain progress and execute permanent change.

The appeal of health coaching can best be described in this quote from Mary Meyer, Marathon Health national director of health coaching:

“I love it not when a person comes in and says thank you for helping me, but when they come in and say ‘Look what I did!’ Because that’s what’s sustainable, when someone changes for themselves.”

Understanding Social Determinants of Health to Enhance Patient-Centered Care

When we keep digging into why patients are unhealthy, we can uncover barriers and begin fixing what is causing poor health. A model structured around patient-centered care focuses on building mutually beneficial healthcare relationships between the family, patient, and medical providers. But, every relationship takes time to grow. When we slow down care and ask the right questions, we can reveal the root causes of health.

Longer appointment times and guided health coaching allows clinicians to dig into the social determinants of health to help patients understand their complete health picture. Quality, patient-centered care takes time and intention, and your worksite health center is the ideal place to support and encourage your employees to achieve their health goals.

More Time, Better Care

Trends in healthcare are shifting to recognize that health is more than a collection of genetic and behavioral risk factors. Healthcare providers must look beyond the doctor’s office to complete our health picture. As discussed in our blog on healthcare equity, multiple factors impact our overall health. Onsite healthcare providers understand the value of weaving the social determinants into their care and employers play an important role in connecting this care to their workforce.

Longer appointment times – typically 30 minutes – are necessary for providers to build meaningful relationships with their patients. Whether your employees go to the worksite health center for a sick visit or chronic condition coaching, longer appointments allow healthcare providers to connect with patients to develop realistic, actionable health plans that fit their lifestyle.

“My onsite healthcare provider was very patient and listened to my health and financial concerns. She found a way for me to obtain my insulin at an affordable price and is now working with me and my primary care provider to manage my health. I no longer have to worry about another healthcare bill to weigh down my finances. This gives me peace of mind and I feel free to go to the doctor without fear of the cost. As a result, my health has changed dramatically and I am now able to administer my insulin regularly. I’m managing my condition so I can be healthy for myself and for my family.” – Martha, winner of Healthy Like Me, Marathon Health’s patient success program

Health Coaching

Helping your employees become more engaged in their own health leads to lasting health improvement. Health coaching can support your employees through weight loss, smoking cessation, stress, illness, and chronic conditions. By offering manageable tips and guidance, your onsite healthcare provider helps your employees stay on track and achieve their goals.

“After my diagnosis, I went to my employer’s onsite health center and met with the health coach. She encouraged me to stabilize my mental health first and supported me throughout the process. She explained healthy food choices and laid out a step-by-step guideline that gave me recipes and food suggestions. Her encouragement motivated me to maintain my healthy habits and lose more weight.” – Angela, winner of Healthy Like Me, Marathon Health’s patient success program

At Marathon Health, our health coaching methodology uses motivational interviewing, appreciative inquiry, and mindfulness techniques. Rather than healthcare providers telling patients what to do, motivational interviewing is a collaborative process and uses shared decision-making to ensure healthcare decisions align with the patient’s values, preferences, and goals. Weaving the social determinants into healthcare blends clinical data with external health influencers to better understand a patient’s health.

Changing Healthcare to Improve Health

Marathon Health’s approach to healthcare goes back to our earliest driving principle – we must empower patients to take control so they understand their health, develop new behaviors, and make a plan for long-term health improvement. Longer appointments and more time with patients combined with our coaching methods are the key ingredients to helping patients improve their health.

To read real health transformation stories from weight loss to cancer recovery, check out Healthy Like Me, Marathon Health’s patient success program.

Corporate Wellness Careers: Health and Wellness Coaching

Health and wellness coaching is used to help patients during their journey to get healthier by tackling health topics such as: weight management, tobacco cessation, stress management, healthy eating, physical activity, illnesses and conditions of a chronic nature.

The best way to demonstrate wellness and health coaching provided by our clinicians – providers, nurses, dietitians, and physical therapists – is to dissect our mission statement, “Inspiring people to lead healthier lives.”

“Inspire People to Lead Healthier Lives”

Let’s start with “Inspiring people.” Marathon Health clinicians are trained in motivational interviewing and the transtheoretical model to make each health coaching visit personal. Our approach puts each patient in the driver’s seat of their health. This partnership allows patients to define what their best health looks like and what type of health goals they would like to achieve.

“To lead healthier lives.” This is where clinical knowledge is imparted to our patients during health coaching. With the overwhelming amount of health advice on the internet (both credible and questionable), health coaching gives our patients a direct line to a medical professional who can help them understand what their current health status means and the benefits healthy habits – big and small – can deliver. The differentiator between reading credible health information online and health coaching with Marathon Health is the support, guidance, and practical advice based on each patient’s personal and professional lives.

Careers with Marathon Health

So what does it take to become a health coach with Marathon Health? In a nutshell, our clinicians embody compassion, empathy, a passion for wellness and clinical expertise. If you would like to know more about health coaching certifications held by Marathon Health clinicians, contact us today.

Finally, if you want to see exactly how our clinicians are inspiring people to lead healthier lives, read these stories shared by patients at Marathon Health wellness centers across the country describing their health victories – many as a result of their hard work, dedication, and the support received during health coaching.