August is the National Wellness Month
Right from focusing on self-care to cultivating healthy lifestyle habits to improve holistic wellness, health and wellbeing can mean many things for different people. As the month of August is dedicated to health and wellbeing, it is the right time to understand our specific wellness needs and address them with the best-suited measures.
There is plenty of evidence proving the association between employee wellbeing and business growth. Corporate wellness programs are proven employee engagement strategies that can help in improving employee wellbeing, reflecting better workplace productivity and business growth.
Well-designed corporate wellness programs are a prerequisite to achieving all or most of the anticipated benefits. An ordinary workplace wellness program may offer only limited wellness modules and not deliver the expected outcomes in the long run, which will be a loss of the invested wellness dollars, time, and other resources. And so, it is crucial to know what to include in the workplace wellness programs to make them a success.
Here are a few key pointers to consider while planning and designing your workplace wellness programs –
- Seek Employee Feedback to Know the Best-Suited Features
Unless you know what your employees need, you cannot offer them what interests them. So, the first step must be a mandatory assessment to identify what the employees really require. There are high chances that employee expectations are far different from what the employers had anticipated.
An employee wellness survey is an effective way of collecting information about what the employees are looking for in the employee wellbeing programs and what wellness resources they need to improve their health. It also makes them feel that they have a say in corporate decisions, giving them a sense of being valued. So, one of the objectives of the corporate wellness programs is employee engagement, then seeking employee feedback through pulse surveys and other ways is a good way to boost participation.
2. Planning Clear Objectives and Wellness Goals
Every employee is different from others, and so will be their health and wellness needs. So, the one-size-fits-all approach does not fit well for all organizations. And so, each company must have its employee wellbeing programs customized to meet the specific health and wellbeing needs of the workforce. To design a customized wellness program, it is important to understand the objectives first to set the right business and wellness goals.
Here are a few pointers to consider while setting the right objectives and goals –
- What health concerns are employees trying to overcome?
- Are the wellness program modules capable of addressing physical, mental, and other holistic wellbeing dimensions?
- What must be evaluated to know the short-term and long-term outcomes?
- Planning the budget for the employee wellness program.
3. Health Risk Assessments and Biometric Screenings
Health risk assessments and biometric screenings are usually onboarding activities in most well-designed employee wellness programs. They give an insight into the current health status, risk factors, and lifestyle habits of the employees, including diet, physical activity, medical history, smoking habits, etc. The screenings give an idea about the health vitals like blood glucose levels, cholesterol levels, blood pressure, and BMI. With a clear idea of where employees must focus on for better health and wellbeing, it becomes easier to choose the right modules and boost engagement.
4. Gamification and Wellness Challenge Ideas
Simply taking an assessment and health screening will not change employee’s minds about their wellbeing or lifestyle habits. Employers must go the extra mile to ensure their workforce is participating and engaging with the employee wellness solutions for better outcomes. Considering the human competitive nature, employers can include suitable gamification aspects to their wellness solutions to make them interesting and engaging for the employees.
Including corporate wellness challenges ideas that focus on different holistic health dimensions can be engaging and exciting to the employees. As a part of our corporate wellness programs, Wellness360 offers pre-defined wellness challenge activities, which can be customized according to the specific workplace wellness needs. Be it to promote healthy eating, improve lifestyle habits, or virtual wellness challenges, Wellness360 offers it all. Along with fun wellness challenge ideas, employers can include other gamification factors like rewards and incentives to lure employees into participating and engaging well in the corporate wellness programs.
5. Hire Wellness Program Professionals
Implementing, executing, and managing a workplace wellness program can be quite tedious. Hiring a professional wellness program vendor can be very helpful for organizations that are very familiar with running wellbeing programs. Many credible wellness program providers, like Wellness360, offer features and modules that are pre-defined and easy to implement. Right from the designing part to implementation, the workplace wellness program providers manage most of the activities.
So, make sure that you choose the right wellness program vendor who will not only customize the employee wellness program in line with the health and wellness needs of your workplace, but will also offer all the right modules to ensure maximum employee engagement. Be it a well-designed wellness program platform, an appealing corporate wellness app, or the wellness challenge ideas, make a checklist of what is required to run the employee wellness program smoothly, and check if the wellbeing program vendor is ready to offer the best version of it. Download our Wellness Program Assessment and Scorecard to evaluate the vendors before making the big decision.
As August is National Wellness Month, it is the best time for employers to implement corporate wellness programs to promote employee health and wellbeing. However, just any wellness plan will only be a waste of resources and efforts. So, consider the above pointers and make sure you go through all the details while designing and executing the corporate wellness program to improve employee engagement, productivity, and overall workplace wellness.