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WashU Champion News | September 2023
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Included in this newsletter:
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Champion Awardco
Dear Wellness Champions,
We appreciate your efforts and dedication to promoting employee well-being at WashU. As you know, our employee experience embraces a holistic approach to well-being that encompasses the people at WashU, our culture and community. Your role is crucial to our collective success. To make recognizing the efforts of our faculty and staff as simple as possible, WashU has partnered with Awardco to provide faculty and staff with a digital employee recognition platform. Through this platform, you can send any faculty or staff, or an entire team, a digital thank you: a WashU Kudos!
When you send a WashU Kudos to a fellow faculty or staff member, it will be delivered to the associated WashU email and will also appear in the platform's feed. You can choose to leave comments or reactions on WashU Kudos you send or receive, or other Kudos in the social feed, as well as make it private.
As a Wellness Champion, we’re inviting you to participate in a pilot session of the platform before it’s rolled out to the larger WashU faculty and staff population. You can log on to the platform through single sign-on with your WUSTL Key at washu.awardco.com. We ask you to explore the recognition platform, send a few WashU Kudos only to other Champions and provide your feedback via an anonymous survey by Friday, Sept. 22. This should take less than 5 minutes to complete. Thank you for helping us celebrate each other and our WashU community! Please expect a WashU Kudos in appreciation of your time!
Katy Henke
Manager of HR Communication and Employee Engagement
k.henke@wustl.edu
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| | - Share resources to support work-life and family care
- Request a health screening for your department
- Join the Wellness Champions Microsoft Teams channel
- Welcome new WashU Wellness Champions
- Update your Wellness Champion Professional Affiliation in Workday
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Fall Wellness Challenge: WalktoberWalktober is a fun and inspiring way to take advantage of autumn’s cool temperatures and spectacular views as you step out and step up to better health. During this 6-week challenge, you’ll be taken on a virtual color tour through some of the world’s most vibrant, breathtaking landscapes — while boosting energy, improving mood, and making walking a priority.
Priority registration opens for Wellness Champions on Wednesday, September 20. Start logging your activity on Monday, Oct. 9.
We highly encourage all Champions to create a team and be a Team Captain for this activity challenge! See this toolkit for more information.
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Update Your Professional Affiliation in WorkdayAs part of our new reporting system, we are asking all Champions to indicate their Wellness Champion status by updating their professional affiliation in Workday. If you have not done so yet, we kindly ask you to take a moment today to make this update so we can keep current on our membership records.
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Sleep HygieneBy: Erin McGraw
Sleep is essential to well-being. It provides the energy needed for work, physical activity, meal preparation, family responsibilities, and social connection. Restorative functions such as tissue repair, muscle growth, and hormone regulation occur while we sleep. Though essential, 1 in 3 adults do not get enough sleep. Insufficient sleep is linked to an increased risk for certain chronic disease states, illness, depression, and anxiety. Additionally, inadequate sleep can lead to an increase in weight, irritability, risk of car accidents, and impaired decision-making skills.
Revamping your sleep routine is one way to improve the duration and quality of sleep. Limiting screen time before bedtime can make falling asleep easier. Sleep experts recommend no screens 1-2 hours before going to sleep. Additionally, a bedtime routine consisting of calming and relaxing activities signals to your brain that the body is getting ready for sleep. It is recommended to keep the same bedtime and wake time 7 days a week to help regulate your circadian rhythm. Creating a sleep environment conducive to sleep can help with duration and quality of sleep. A dark, cool room free of distractions that is neither too loud nor too quiet is ideal.
If you are looking for more assistance with improving your sleep quality, reach out to the MyWay to Health Team to receive individualized support or contact the Sleep Medicine Center. Additionally, view MyWay to Health's Healthy Sleep Habits Workshop for tips on how to improve sleep.
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Promote Enrich, a new financial well-being tool
Enrich is a web-based platform that provides personalized, interactive finance courses available to you 24/7.
If you have not done so already, we encourage you to create an account, take the "Check-Up" and "Money Personality" assessments, and explore the online articles, videos, and financial courses available.
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Please note: The information you share in Enrich is confidential - WashU never receives any of your personal financial information.
Wellness Champions can request a brief demostration of the Enrich platform for your next staff meeting. Email wellnessconnection@wustl.edu with the date(s).
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Your Next Move: Transitioning to the New Retirement SeminarSept. 26, 2023: Brown Lounge, Brown Hall, 5:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m.
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Your Next Move, a 90 minute seminar, taught by Chris Frey, LCSW – provides experienced workers and learners with the skills and essential elements necessary for making a successful transition to retirement and a fulfilling next chapter in their lives. This seminar will use assessment, planning, seeking information, and enlisting support to help define what the New Retirement looks like for you. Attendees will learn the critical ingredients of retirement beyond finances: Purpose, Leisure, Social and Health and Well-being.
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Your Next Move: Transitioning to the New Retirement 8-Week CourseWednesdays, 5:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m, Beginning October 25, 2023
This 8-week course, taught by Chris Frey, LSW, will use assessment, planning, seeking information, and enlisting support to help define what the New Retirement looks like for you. Students take a deeper dive into material introduced in the 90-minute seminar (featured above) and will further explore the critical ingredients of retirement beyond finances: Purpose, Leisure, Social and Health and Well-being.
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Child Tuition Assistance WebinarsWashU provides dependent child tuition assistance for the children of full-time employees who have seven or more years of continuous service and for the children of part-time employees with an equivalent amount of service.
If you have a child who will be attending college in spring 2024 and want to learn more about the Dependent Child Tuition Assistance benefit, now is your chance.
WashU's Benefits team will be offering three one-hour webinars designed to educate our employees about this unique benefit. During the webinars, the Benefits team will walk employees through the application and payment process. Please feel free to register for one or more of the following webinars: - Tuesday, Sept. 26 | 9 to 10 a.m.
- Wednesday, Sept. 27 | 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
- Thursday, Sept. 28 | 5 to 6 p.m.
Questions can be directed to the Benefits Service Center at 314-935-2332, option #1, or hr-benefitsmail@wustl.edu.
We look forward to seeing you at the webinar!
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Schedule your annual health screening!
Each calendar year, benefits-eligible employees qualify for a free health screening, and once complete, receive a $50 gift card. Your health screening includes the following tests: blood pressure, blood sugar, body mass index and cholesterol. At this time, onsite events are available on the Danforth, School of Medicine and Satellite Campuses. View our FAQs for more information Take Action: Email this flyer to your colleagues to encourage their participation.
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Upcoming Onsite Annual Health Screening Events:
- Tuesday, Oct. 10 | 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. | Sumers Recreation, Take Care Health Fair, 330 N. Big Bend Blvd
- Friday, Nov. 3 | 8 a.m. - 3 p.m. | EPNEC - Great Rooms A & B, 320 S. Euclid Ave.
- Thursday, Nov. 16 | 8:30 a.m. - 3 p.m. | Danforth University Center (DUC), Room 276, 6475 Forsyth Blvd.
Download Physician Form: If you have an upcoming appointment with your physician, you can download this form and have your doctor complete the form then fax it back to the vendor. Please allow up to two weeks from the time your physician submits your form for your results to be posted on the Health Advocate portal. Your physician form must be submitted by Dec. 31, 2023 to count towards this calendar year and to earn the 2023 incentive.
Find a LabCorp Location: Use this option to locate and schedule an appointment at a LabCorp location most convenient for you. LabCorp will complete your screening and send the results to Health Advocate
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| HR WELL-BEING TEAM SPOTLIGHT
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Meet Katy Henke: Manager of HR Communication and Employee EngagementKaty is the manager of communications and employee engagement in the Office of Human Resources at WashU. She strives to provide WashU employees with a meaningful and enriching experience that provides holistic ways to thrive both at work and in personal life. Her professional career began in the private health care industry and transitioned to academic medicine upon starting with WashU, where she has worked in the public health and well-being spaces in addition to HR. Her unique background has provided her the opportunity to communicate with the masses while trying to personalize and engage WashU’s resources to support, grow and recognize each other.
Katy earned her master’s degree in Health Communications from the University of New York-Albany and her bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Missouri. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her family, including her husband, two children and their dog, and being active outside whenever possible.
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HR Well-being is an employee health initiative that, in partnership with Washington University experts, offers opportunities for employees to improve their physical and emotional well-being. This initiative focuses on developing evidence-based programs and making personal connections to provide employees with valuable and fun experiences that improve their health. We aim to foster a culture that prioritizes employee health and well-being as integral to the mission of teaching, research, and patient care, and create an environment where the healthier choice is the easiest choice; where employees are empowered to choose wellness.
WashU Wellness Champions help us understand the needs within different work environments, promote the importance of personal health, and encourage their coworkers to engage in wellness program offerings.
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