
It’s that time of year again—time to make New Year’s
resolutions. For many of us, they will likely be the same resolutions
we made last year, particularly if they involve personal fitness goals.
As luck would have it, the top New Year’s fitness resolutions for
most people correlate to what you are (or should be) trying to get your
employees to do with your organization’s wellness program:
- Get in shape
- Lose weight
- Eat healthier
- Manage stress
- Stop procrastinating
So, it’s in everybody’s best interest to execute good wellness
programs that really work. To help you help your employees sustain their
resolve beyond January, we’ve created a handy checklist, based on
the easy-to-remember acronym,
STEPS.
Simplify
Many employees fail to embrace wellness programs at work due to lack of
awareness, lack of time, or lack of easy access. Make it as simple as
possible for your employees to adopt and maintain healthy habits. This
ranges from healthier food selections on campus and exercise awareness
campaigns in high-traffic areas, to more elaborate schemes like providing
your workers with fitness monitoring devices. You could negotiate a bulk
purchase of devices that would help your employees track their 10,000
daily steps, sleep patterns, heart rates, respiration patterns and so
much more. Studies show that active monitoring can motivate people to
lead much more active lives—a huge wellness boon.
Team Up!
Teamwork is a powerful motivator for most people. Create friendly competitions
between departments or different offices. These can be actual competitive
events—like an athletics day with organized sporting events. Or,
they can simply be group goals like seeing which team can lose the most
aggregate weight in a quarter, or improve their collective blood pressure
the most. Whatever you do, try to make the competitions as fun as possible
so more people will want to participate. Give prizes to and recognize
your wellness champions, which will incentivize others to chase the same
reward and recognition by trying harder.
Engage
Starting a wellness program is often the easy part. The more difficult
part is finding ways to comprehensively and continually engage your employees—after
the New Year’s resolutions have faded. Craft a year-long internal
marketing campaign that informs your employees about all your wellness
incentives, and tie it to national and international health campaigns
like the WHO’s mental health awareness week. Communicate with your
employees consistently using “snack-size” messages: drink
more water; get some fresh air; breathe deeply; stretch! Utilize everyday
messaging channels like computer boot-up screens and elevator graphics
to keep workplace wellness top of mind. Most important, ask your employees
for input. What are their fitness challenges? What are their wellness
goals? What ideas do they have for improving the company wellness program?
Reward them for their ideas and implement the best ones.
Prevent
Since an ounce of prevention really is worth a pound of cure, make sure
you’ve incorporated robust preventative care incentives into the
company health plans. Prioritize awareness and promotional messages that
educate your workers about preventative care. Invest in simple measures
that deliver outsized return on investment. For example, you can promote
good hand hygiene practices by providing every employee with their own
personal-size bottle of hand sanitizer, branded with your company logo.
Partnering with local providers to host flu vaccination clinics on campus
can dramatically reduce the incidence of seasonal flu in your employees,
which can be a major drain on their health, wellness, and productivity.
Sing Praises & Set Goals
Before embarking on your New Year’s wellness campaign, take a moment
to celebrate 2017. Sing the praises of your wellness champions—those
key employees who have embraced the spirit of wellness and are acting
as your front line of communication and engagement. Make sure they have
the full support of the organization, including all the metrics that demonstrate
the success and return on investment from wellness initiatives.
Remind everyone in the organization that there are no quick fixes with
health and wellness, but that with persistence and support, everyone can
prevail. To that end, empower your wellness champions to work with employees
to set personal fitness and wellness goals and to devise strategies for
success. Fitness coaches, wellness portals, individual challenges and
other resources will help workers maintain their commitment.
Corporate wellness programs help workers develop healthy habits which improve
performance, enhance productivity, and ultimately reduce the cost to the
employer of providing healthcare. A well-designed wellness program should
always take advantage of a new year to stimulate employees’ interest
and participation. However, a truly successful, sustainable program learns
from the previous year and builds on its success to deliver even better
results in the new year.
St. Joseph Hoag Health
offers “Lunch & Learn” sessions that educate and engage your employees on timely fitness and wellness
topics in an informal, lunchtime setting at your offices. Ask us how we
can help you help your employees achieve their 2018 health goals with
the best care and most innovative wellness programs in Orange County.
Contact us at
foremployers@stjoe.org or call (949) 381-4777.