5 Important Steps to a Successful Corporate Wellness Program
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Many employees spend hours sitting at their desks shifting from screen to screen with little movement throughout the day. This can lead to serious health implications for your employees and can have a severe impact on their productivity.
Creating a wellness culture that encourages employees to adopt healthier lifestyles can provide many benefits to both employees and organizations.
Implementing corporate wellness programs are an effective way to improve the health and wellness of your employees and demonstrate your organization’s investment in their well-being.
Here are five important steps organizations should take to create a successful corporate wellness program.
Step 1: Assess Employee Needs
Before you can start planning your corporate wellness program, you must understand what employees need from a wellness program, their current health challenges, and their wellness goals. Communicating with employees one-on-one or conducting a survey are effective ways to understand your workforce's health and wellness goals. You can also hold some focus groups with small numbers of employees to open up some dialogue. Since each employee will have different needs, creating an inclusive environment that accommodates the needs of all employees is imperative. Consider how you will encourage the participation of employees with disabilities or cultural differences.
When designing your survey Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) suggests including the following:
Health conditions
Frequency of health services (doctor visits, dental visits, blood pressure/cholesterol checks)
Tobacco and alcohol use
Diet
Physical Activity level at work and outside of work
Height and weight
Vaccinations
But don’t forget to focus beyond only physical wellness, and review any mental health-related questions and concerns you also want to help support.
This is also a valuable opportunity to assess the organization’s current and past wellness strategies or programs. Consider some of the following:
What health initiatives have been implemented in the past? Were they successful?
What is your current wellness strategy?
Does your organization provide healthy food options, if provided?
Does your organization offer incentives for physical activity of all types?
Does your organization offer discounts for local fitness facilities?
Does your organization offer on-site physical activity classes?
What supports do you provide that are non-physical, like meditation, mental-health needs?
Did your organization look at other aspects of wellness such as spiritual or financial in addition to physical and mental health initiatives?
Does your organization provide an Employee Assistance Program (EAP)?
Having employees help design programs and be represented is an important first step.
Step 2: Obtain Management Support
Obtaining buy-in from leadership is essential to the success of any corporate wellness program. Wellness programs should include support from business owners, and senior and middle management. Support from leadership should also include their active participation in the wellness program.
So many times leaders don’t walk the talk, or role model the initiatives and this is often overlooked.
Prepare a presentation demonstrating how the program will benefit employees and how it will support the company’s mission and objectives. Use the data collected from your assessments to support your case.
It’s also important to create a budget that will show a breakdown of the costs of your wellness program. Having the business case takes careful research and thoughtful analysis. Demonstrating the return on investment is a must when obtaining leadership support. You need to convince them that having healthy employees will create an energetic, productive and engaged workforce that will impact business results!
Step 3: Determine Objectives
The next step in creating a corporate wellness program is to determine the objectives of your wellness program. Use the data gathered from your surveys, one-on-ones and focus groups to establish the goals of your wellness program. These objectives can include reducing health care costs, increasing productivity, reducing absenteeism, increasing movement, creating connection and/or improving eating habits.
Specify what metrics you will measure and what method you will use to assess the progress of your objectives. Determine the milestones of when you’ll measure as well, in six months, one year, and annually after? You need to relate it back to your budget and return on investment so you’re seeing results linked to the wellness initiatives.
Step 4: Design Program
Once you’ve determined the objectives of your wellness program, create a wellness committee or appoint an employee to lead the program. The wellness committee will be responsible for planning, promoting, and implementing the program. When deciding which staff members to include in your wellness committee, determine whether employees are willing to volunteer. If you’re a larger organization, consider employees from all departments to obtain multiple perspectives. Also remember to have an executive sponsor or champion who is going to be a raving fan of the program and help ensure it is successful.
When designing your wellness program, it’s important to take a holistic approach which includes: physical wellness, emotional wellness, mental wellness, and financial wellness. Using the data you collected from your assessment, incorporate the activities and educational resources that will address the needs and interests of your employees. Consider what alternatives you will include to encourage participation from all employees and accommodate those with disabilities and cultural differences.
Decide how you will ensure long-term participation and encourage employees to continue participating in the program. Offering incentives can increase employee participation and completion of wellness programs. Depending on your budget, you can provide rewards such as cash bonuses, gift cards, employee discounts, free lunches, or additional time off.
The key is to make it fun! And have a variety of options available.
Step 5: Implement Program & Evaluate Success
After the program has been designed, determine the best method to promote the program to your employees. The wellness committee can create a communications plan that communicates the program through emails, newsletters, or during meetings. Explain that the program is voluntary and share how they can participate. Convey what benefits the wellness program will provide and what incentives you will offer.
Creating a culture of wellness is essential to successfully implementing your wellness program. When executing your corporate wellness program, create an environment that supports your employee's development of healthy habits and behaviours. To ensure your program's success, it's also essential your employees are making long-term commitments to their wellness goals and are not motivated solely by incentives.
The final step to a successful corporate wellness program is to gather feedback from employees and make adjustments to improve the program. Evaluate the metrics you planned to measure depending on your objectives. These metrics might include participation rates, reduction in healthcare costs, and the achievement of employees' individual health goals such as losing weight or eating healthier.
Supporting the health and well-being of your employees is essential to creating a healthy workplace. Implementing a successful wellness program requires careful research and planning to ensure the effectiveness of your program and strong participation by your employees. Understanding your employee’s needs and how your wellness program will help achieve their wellness goals is fundamental in determining how successful your program will be.
Creating a holistic healthy workplace starts with the commitment and a desire to work together to help employees be the best versions of themselves every day! You can start small and then add on, the key is to simply start!