Keeping your employees engaged and excited about your workplace wellness program is no small task. The idea of a healthy lifestyle is exciting at first, however, if you allow your wellness program to get repetitive and not focused on your employees needs it could fail. This is why it is important to have a culture-first mentality when approaching wellness programs. By focusing on creating a wellness culture you are taking into account your employee's entire well-being, from work/life balance, to physical and mental health, to social, financial and spiritual well-being. To get the most out of your employees you must care about your employees beyond the office and support them across all aspects of their life.
Kin, a HR Software company, boasts that “companies that are interested in offering a wellness program should take a customized approach to meet the unique needs of their staff and their business.” These are the steps to take in order to make sure that your company is implementing a culture of wellness.
"The wellness program conversation has changed as organizations recognize and acknowledge that holistic health and wellness extend far beyond one's physical health," says Chris Boyce, CEO of Virgin Pulse, which provides a suite of employee health and wellbeing products. The primary reason for encouraging company wellness has long been the benefit of getting a price reduction with insurance companies. However, companies should start to lean more toward enriching the mental, emotional, and physical health of their employees. Tech company, Cisco, is a great example of a company that has transitioned into a focus on wellbeing with their employees. Cisco gave their employees access to 7 high-tech fitness institutions, where they had access to the best trainers and high-tech exercise equipment. However, according to Katelyn Johnson, Cisco's manager of integrated health, “Today, Cisco's wellbeing platform consists of four pillars of health: physical, emotional, social and financial health.” As part of their new wellbeing platform, Cisco offers a cloud-based wellness tracking program as well as on-site mindfulness workshops to aid their employees in their wellness journeys. The benefit of making sure the wellbeing of your employees is taken care of results in happy and loyal employees.
A cookie cutter wellness plan is not going to work for everyone in your office. Each office is full of people with different interests, needs, and experience levels. Conducting a survey to figure out what your employees needs and wants are is a great way to gather data to implement into your office wellness plan. “A great way to gauge your people’s interest and readiness for any wellness program is to simply ask them,” said Tim Baker, CHRL, an independent Human Resources Consultant in Toronto, Canada. Creating a survey that presents a list of possible wellness programs will help employees determine what wellness program could best for your company. Also, leave an open-ended option for your employees to leave comments on what they would like to see as a part of their wellness program. Once this data is collected, use it to shape a wellness program that caters to your employees.
Having a wellness program that solely focuses on physical wellbeing has been a trend for some time now, however, many employees are struggling when it comes to their financial health. By providing tools to help your employees along on their financially stable journey, you are showing that you care about not only their performance at work, but their overall wellbeing. "Financial wellbeing programs, in particular, are in demand, as financial concerns among employees are rising," according to Douglas Choo, head of strategy, national accounts at insurance company MetLife. Choo says that Metlife’s study found that 53% of the employees that Metlife surveyed believe that financial education workshops help them better understand their financial needs, and only 38% of employers offer these programs.
Many employees find themselves getting stuck in a rut with their fitness goals, but a good way to help them push forward is to put an employee incentive plan in place. Rewardian offers a great employee incentive program that can help provide a specialized platform to reward your employees for reaching their goals. Within the platform you can create different programs with points budgets to reward your employees based on the goals that they have set for themselves. Not only can you, as their employer show your support, employees can recognize their peers within the platform to congratulate them on goals they have accomplished. Not only are incentives a great way to reward your employees, incentives help boost employee morale by letting them know that you have their interests in mind.
By making sure that you check the box of all these elements of employee wellness, you are making sure that you have created a wellness culture that your employees can stick with because it is integrated into all aspects of their life.