Franklin County Employee of the Month for January 2019

Ms. Hamel has been employed with Franklin County Human Resources since August 2016 as the County’s Healthy Living Coordinator. The selection for the January 2019 Employee of the Month was determined by the STAR Committee from a total of 6 nominations.

The STAR nomination forms include the following comments:

“Sarah is leading the drive for better health for all county employees. Here are just some of the events and programs she orchestrated in 2018:

January – Financial Wellness Month that included a presentation by BB&T bank.

February – Heart Month with a seminar by Dr. Safi. This month also had a “Be Kind” challenge that included a calendar of kindness suggestions. T-shirts were available for purchase.

March – National Nutrition Month was promoted with information on nutrition, cooking and use of herbs.

April – This was Financial Planning Month with lectures on topics such a wills and estate planning, buying a home, investment basics, and retirement planning.

May - May was Mental Health Month with information sent out to employees that covered sleep, stress, exercise, diet and nutrition. Lunch-and-Learns were held on hearing loss, genealogy, and essential oils.

June – The Walking Challenge started. Programs on summertime issues such as mosquito-borne diseases were given.

July – Topics were connected to outside interests such as North Square Farmers Market and local state parks.

August – Training on immunizations, Lyme Disease, outdoor safety, and diversity were provided.

September – Suicide Prevention, Caring for Aging Parents, and Dementia were topics for trainings.

October – This was a big month of events with the Breast Cancer Awareness fundraiser and the Health and Wellness fair. The fundraiser collected over $1,600 for the local breast cancer charity. That brings our total giving since this started to over $4,500! The fair had over 20 vendors set up in two rooms at the Admin Annex. This was also Biometric month with 228 employees submitting blood work for wellness checks.

November – Compassion Fatigue was the focus of the month. A trainer was brought in to provide courses at several sites. The new 2019 Lifestyle Change program was announced. It was also “No Shave” November, with 14 participants raising $870.00.

In addition to all of these programs, there were several blood drives and in-body screenings throughout the year. A wellness survey was sent out to all employees for feedback on programming.”

“Sarah Hamel is responsible for approving all the inputs for Wellness Program points for things like dental visits, yearly physicals, and wellness checks such as mammograms. She also records video of the lunchtime programs and creates a quiz to go along with each one. Employees who cannot attend a program can still earn Wellness points by watching videos and completing the quiz. Sarah documents the points earned for videos. There were 294 employees who earned the wellness incentive for 2019!”

Ms. Hamel’s outstanding characteristics are attributes that have not gone unnoticed by her peers. The nomination form described her as motivated, dedicated and energetic. “Sarah deserves recognition for all of her hard work in keeping the County focused on wellness and prevention. Sarah has kept the focus on helping employees learn new ways of being healthy in all aspects of life…mind, body, spirit, family, finance, and work. The Wellness Program is outstanding in its efforts to involve more and more employees in healthy lifestyle choices.

”We are grateful to Ms. Sarah Hamel as she exudes a high standard of customer service, excellence, and respect to the employees and residents of Franklin County.

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