5 Elements for Ensuring a Successful Workplace Wellness Program

If anyone wants to survive and thrive in today’s date, then the only option we have is to be efficient and agile in whatever we do. This fact is also applicable to businesses trying to beat their competitors and grab the top spot. Here, one of the easiest ways to achieve this feat is to have a healthy and engaged workforce. It is for this reason many organizations are now trying to incorporate workplace wellness programs as a part of their company culture.

Unlike earlier, workplace wellness is not just limited to extending health insurance coverage to your employees or organizing occasional health check-ups. It now involves a more holistic approach by enabling employees to get accurate data regarding their health and letting them participate in various fitness activities in real-time.

All this is now possible because of cloud-based wellness solutions, which are highly scalable and give organizations an edge over their traditional employee wellness initiatives.

However, no matter how much technology we include to improve the health and wellness of the employees, there will always be a few elements that you can't overlook. And in this article, I'll be sharing some of the things that are very necessary for delivering a successful workplace wellness program.

5 Crucial Elements for an Employee Friendly Wellness Program

1. Constitute a Managerial Committee

The first and foremost thing that you should do before implementing a wellness program is to form a committee responsible for every aspect of the program. In most cases, the charge of running a workplace wellness program lies with the HR manager. However, HR managers already have a lot to deal with in the workplace.

They aren't able to invest their time looking after a wellness program. For this reason, you must always constitute a management committee before initiating any employee health and wellness program. The role of such a committee would be to maintain coordination between the employees and the management for properly planning and executing the wellness program.

Here, you are free to decide the structure of such a committee but involve a few employees in it as to instill a sense of responsibility in their minds.

2. Hold an Employee Wellness Survey Before to your Wellness Program

Many organizations include wellness programs based on the positive outcomes achieved by others. Well, this is actually a mistake that employers need to avoid. Every organization is unique, and your employees might have some other expectations from a wellness program.

That is why you must always try to know your employees’ opinions by hosting a workplace wellness survey before launching your program.

Once you know the concerns of your employees, you’ll be able to curate a robust wellness initiative that would really appeal to your employees, thus, making your program successful.

Learn more: A Beginner’s Guide to Conducting Effective Employee Surveys

3. Divide your Employees into Teams

Workplace wellness programs can be a great addition to your list of team-building activities. The modern-day workplace wellness programs incorporate various health challenges for helping your employees get accustomed to a healthy lifestyle. Here, you can divide your employees into teams based on the challenge assigned to them and promote healthy competition. Additionally, you can ask the teams to designate a team leader responsible for communicating the goals and outcomes associated with the challenge.

Doing this will allow your employees to build better camaraderie with their peers and ignite their team spirit and keep them motivated to achieve a common goal which is to be fit and healthy.

4. Regularly Assess the Impact of your Wellness Program

Assessing the impact of your wellness program frequently is very important to make the right decisions.

Suppose you have launched a wellness program that is meant to improve the cardiovascular health of your employees. You should look into how much the employees have benefitted from it. There might be some other factors that may hinder your program's success rate, and you must keep them in check.

While gauging the effectiveness of your program, you can consider your employees' emotions, like whether they felt lifted from their previous health status, and likewise, you'll know if your initiative is heading in the right direction.

5. Choosing your Wellness Program Vendor

Hosting a wellness program isn't that tough if the management is experienced enough. Still, it is advisable to take support from an external vendor who specializes in delivering such programs. A lot of companies now provide employee wellness services by helping you organize both on-site and off-site activities.

However, before you go forward with the implementation, always try out their offerings along with some of your employees. This way, you'll be able to pick out the best wellness program. Also, you must always go with the one where you get complete flexibility in operating your wellness program.

Also, check if the vendor will provide support to your employees if any issues arise once the program kickstarts so that no one feels left out in your workplace wellness initiative.

At the end

A workplace wellness program isn't something that you just have to implement once, and it'll improve your employees' health status. It is a continuous process where you need to nurture your employees and transform their lifestyles. For this, you need to keep on reevaluating your processes until you're sure your employees are embracing the change. The same further reflects in their level of motivation at work.

The above points were some of the things which I believe are important and you should look into for hosting a perfect employee wellness program. But, if you think that some other points also define the success of workplace health initiatives, then we would love to hear it from you in the comments below.

Working as a SEO Analyst and Content Marketer at Vantage Circle, Angshuman always stays curious and is passionate about learning new things. Got any question? Drop a mail at editor@vantagecircle.com