City of Hollywood
COH Wellness
Florida’s Hollywood prioritizes employees’ needs
The city of Hollywood offers mental health services, acupuncture, mindfulness workshops and more. It’s a winner for Employee Benefits in the Wellness Initiatives Programs category as well as for Outstanding Total Rewards Programs for large organizations in Ragan’s Workplace Wellness Awards.
An employer of choice wants employees to feel supported, safe, recognized and appreciated. Employees want an employer who cares about their wellbeing, physical and emotional. South Florida’s city of Hollywood strives to do just that.
Founded in 1925, between Fort Lauderdale and Miami, Hollywood is filled with parks, golf courses and sandy beaches. Home to approximately 150,000 residents and 10,000 companies, Hollywood has a total area of 31 square miles and is the state’s 12th largest city.
The city prioritizes employee wellness and mental health with innovative programs like EAPs, mindfulness, meditation, yoga and web-based technology platforms like Happify and iprevail, which provide on-demand coaching and personalized learning to help reduce anxiety and stress and boost overall health.
It also supports employees’ use of Talkspace, an online therapy service that connects employees to a dedicated, licensed therapist via private messaging or live video. In addition, Hollywood offers wellness challenges like an employee “step” challenge, and it hosted a series of mindfulness workshops for employees. It provides comprehensive annual wellness exams through Life Scan and allows employees to use employee fitness facilities during their work hours.
Among the additional improved benefits perks implemented in the past 12 months, the city increased funding for its health reimbursement arrangement for employees, relaxed pre-certification requirements for certain imaging and scans, and added acupuncture and infertility treatments to its medical plan.
It enhanced wellness by offering additional on-site preventive services such as skin cancer screening and dental services, along with on-site mammography and comprehensive wellness exams. The city also offered monetary rewards to encourage preventive care, using Cigna’s MotivateMe wellness program.
A discount program helps employees with travel, rentals and entertainment, along with resources for families and parents, health and wellbeing. A debt management and credit counseling vendor aids employees in improving their financial literacy and money management through educational workshops, budget counseling and debt management plans.
For the police and fire departments, the city added two relaxation rooms (with plans to add more) and piloted a comprehensive peer counseling program, again with plans to extend it throughout the city.
Congratulations to this outstanding team.