SHU Wins Eighth Gold Award For Promoting A Healthy Workplace
FAIRFIELD, Conn.—The Business Council of Fairfield County has honored Sacred Heart University as a gold award winner in its annual Healthy Workplaces best practices competition.
Sacred Heart earned its ninth consecutive recognition because of its success in promoting healthy lifestyles and practices among its employees and workplace. Since 2010, SHU has earned the gold award eight times and achieved the platinum award once.
The University’s Office of Human Resources instituted the SHU Employee Wellness Program in the fall of 2007. Aiming to promote good health and provide faculty and staff with ways to improve their well-being, the effort has contributed to the University’s healthy workplace recognition in recent years, said Sally Schettino, program leader and HR project manager.
Among the wellness offerings is an incentive that gives employees a $360 credit annually earning that offsets the medical premium costs. “Employees are required to complete their annual physical or biometric screening and attend the SHU annual health fair or complete a health risk assessment,” said Liz Henderson, director of employee benefits. “For 2018, 66 percent of our employees are earning this wellness credit and we hope to increase that result for 2019.”
“We are always looking for new and better ways to engage our faculty and staff in wellness initiatives, because we believe that a healthy employee is a happy employee. Our most recent initiative was to provide a fitness facility and full-time wellness professional for our employees. So far, it has been utilized and very well received,” Schettino concluded.
PHOTO CAPTION: At the Business Council of Fairfield County’s Health Workplace Awards are, from left, Chris Viesselman (Aetna), Julia Nofri (Sacred Heart University), Sally Schettino (Sacred Heart University), Chad Gianuzzi (Aetna), Elizabeth Henderson (Sacred Heart University) and Anthony Aguanno (United Healthcare).
About Sacred Heart University
Sacred Heart University, the second-largest independent Catholic university in New England, offers more than 70 undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and certificate programs on its main campus in Fairfield, Conn., and satellites in Connecticut, Luxembourg and Ireland. More than 8,500 students attend the University’s five colleges: Arts & Sciences; Health Professions; Nursing; the Jack Welch College of Business; and the Isabelle Farrington College of Education. The Princeton Review includes SHU in its guides, Best 382 Colleges–2018 Edition, “Best in the Northeast” and Best 267 Business Schools–2018 Edition. It also placed SHU on its lists for “Best College Theater” and “Most Engaged in Community Service,” each of which comprises only 20 U.S. schools. U.S.News & World Report ranks SHU in its Best Colleges 2018 guidebook and calls SHU the fourth “Most Innovative School” in the North. The Chronicle of Higher Education also names SHU one of the fastest-growing Roman Catholic universities in its 2016 almanac. Sacred Heart fields 32 Division I athletic teams and has an award-winning program of community service. www.sacredheart.edu
For additional Sacred Heart University news, please visit http://www.sacredheart.edu/aboutshu/news/.