Employee wellness is a pivotal point in the stressful corporate work environment. It is directly related to the organization’s growth and profit. Employers often look for ways to fulfil this ever-increasing responsibility. This is where employee wellness portals come in.
Employee wellness portals are robust platforms. They help employees monitor and improve their health and wellness. These portals help by monitoring and reducing stress, helping them be mindful, monitoring calorie intake, and much more.
They offer employees the opportunity to participate in various health challenges. These challenges include step challenge, hydration challenge, mindfulness practices, and more. These activities can effectively improve employees' overall quality of life.
The portals are also excellent for employers or organizations to create wellness challenges, monitor participation, and manage wellness programs. They can keep employees' mental and emotional health in check, which employers often fail to notice.
Today, the corporate world is crowded with various wellness portals for employees. Choosing the right one for your organization is challenging and crucial. A good portal is not only easy to use and offers great features but also aligns well with company requirements and policy.
This blog will cover the many features that make a wellness portal great. Browse through the features and benefits of these portals and choose the right one!
11 Must-Have Features of an Employee Wellness Portal
Corporate wellness portals have evolved significantly over the past few years. These platforms can now be flawlessly and easily accessed on multiple devices on the go.
Initially, they only tracked their physical health. Today, through various metrics, they track mental and emotional well-being as well. Here are eleven indispensable features of wellness portals you should consider before choosing:
- Feature #1: Health Tracking Tools
- Feature #2: Wellness Assessments
- Feature #3: Wellness Challenges
- Feature #4: Activity Tracking
- Feature #5: Gamification
- Feature #6: Rewards and Incentive Management
- Feature #7: Effective Reporting
- Feature #8: Social Feed and Customizable Communication
- Feature #9: Mobile App and Device Integration
- Feature #10: Personalized Experience
- Feature #11: Health Coaching and Educational Material
Feature #1: Health Tracking Tools
A prominent feature of these portals is the ability to track health data. Employees can easily track various physical and mental health metrics, such as heart rate, sleep, weight, calorie intake, mood, stress, and other health indicators.
The health tracking tools in a portal also help the organization track the health of their employees. This data can be analyzed on a corporate wellness dashboard to make informed decisions in the future.
Health tracking tools in a wellness portal also help the management. They make it easier for them to reach everyone effectively through wellness programs and make the workplace healthier and more productive.
Feature #2: Wellness Assessments
Wellness assessments are tools that diagnose or test employees' health and wellness. A good wellness portal comes with several diagnostic tools, which evaluate various aspects of employees' overall well-being.
These wellness assessments can be in the form of questionnaires, biometric screenings, and others. They not only measure the physical but mental and emotional well-being as well. The latter are the aspects that often go unnoticed in a corporate organization.
Educating employees about their health helps build a community of health-conscious people. It boosts engagement and nurtures the organization's healthy work environment.
Feature #3: Wellness Challenges
Corporate employees find health and wellness challenges fun, especially when they are structured with incentives and recognition. Therefore, one of the major features of these wellness portals is to have engaging wellness challenges.
Wellness challenges, such as hydration challenges, step challenges, squat challenges, meditation challenges, and others, get the 'always sitting' or inactive employees to move.
Implementing a variety of challenges creates a more positive and productive work environment. These challenges boost the employees' morale and engage them.
Feature #4: Activity Tracking
Activity tracking in wellness portals allows employees to record and monitor their physical activities. On these portals, you can count your steps taken in a day, log exercise sessions and sleep, and track nutrition and hydration.
Activity tracking is quite beneficial, as the progression of a particular activity motivates the employee to push further. Regular physical activity can lead to better weight management, reduced risk of chronic diseases, improved cardiovascular health, and better sleep, all of which result in a more productive workforce.
Feature #5: Gamification
Challenge gamification is a very important feature of wellness portals. It involves giving each participant a score for completing the challenges. This score is recognized on a leaderboard, which further motivates them.
In Vantage Fit, we display our employees on a leaderboard based on their weekly scores and reward them with points and badges for completing certain tasks. Learn more about the gamification of wellness programs with us!
Feature #6: Rewards and Incentive Management
It is very common and effective to use rewards and recognition to encourage people. It is one of the top features of a wellness portal.
This feature enables employees to earn rewards or get incentives for completing wellness challenges, such as walking 4000 steps or completing 20 squats in one go. It fosters a sense of achievement and motivates employees to push their boundaries for better health.
It also encourages employees to participate in their wellness programs, creating a more productive workforce. It engages and encourages employees to have better health in a fun way.
This feature of a wellness portal also helps the organization manage the rewards and incentives allocated for each team.
Feature #7: Effective Reporting
An effective reporting system tracks progress, measures the impact of initiatives, and helps make informed decisions backed by statistics for the well-being of the employees.
An effective corporate wellness portal has features where you can customize reports, view the progress on a comprehensive employee wellness dashboard, and analyze different trends coming up through segmentation and filtering.
A proper reporting system is crucial for organizations starting a wellness program through these portals. It is the foundation of decisions taken in the interest of employee wellness.
Feature #8: Social Feed and Customizable Communication
A social feed where employees can post their fitness accomplishments, workout sessions, and mindful practices greatly boosts engagement. The like, share, and comment options foster a sense of wellness, community, and social support.
Similarly, these portals also have customizable communication systems. Employees can communicate within the portal through personalized messages. They can send each other articles and videos and do much more.
These features help build a community of health-conscious people within the organization.
Feature #9: Mobile App and Device Integrations
Wellness portals for employees have evolved amazingly over the last few decades. Starting as only websites that could only be accessed on a computer, these portals have become easily accessible on multiple devices, including wearables, today.
A robust portal can be integrated into different devices with user-friendly interfaces. It makes the portal more engaging and convenient. It, in turn, boosts the efficacy of other features like gamification, social feed, and easy activity tracking.
Feature #10: Personalized Experience
Personalized experience in these portals means tailoring the features and aspects to individual needs and interests. This makes the portal more engaging and brings more participation.
Some examples of personalized experiences can be individually targeted notifications, suggestions of relevant articles and videos, and challenges based on employees' health data.
In Vantage Fit, we try to keep our employees motivated to complete tasks with personalized notification. We also reward badges and scores to outstanding performers.
This allows employees to set and track their personal health goals, fostering a sense of individual achievement and progress.
Feature #11: Health Coaching and Educational Material
A total of 7.5 million blogs are posted every day. Finding the right and trustable ones on health from these is challenging. A wellness portal like Vantage Fit can make this task easy.
A good wellness portal has a great selection of coaching and educational material for the employees. These materials could include videos, seminars, PDFs, PPTs, books, and audio files. Thus, it enhances employees' knowledge and enables them to make informed decisions about their health.
The portal is available on mobile devices, so employees can easily access it around the clock. It covers a wide range of health-related topics, such as nutrition, physical fitness, and mental health.
Educating employees about their health helps build a community of health-conscious people. It boosts engagement and improves the organization's work culture.
How Can Vantage Fit Wellness Portal Help You?
If you are an employer, this line is for you—an employee lost is a significant cost incurred. Keep your employees engaged with proper wellness portals, such as Vantage Fit, that keep them healthy.
Even though a wellness portal is not a standalone tool for employee wellness, portals like Vantage Fit can help organizations formulate a water-tight employee wellness strategy. Having a wellness portal in the company always compliments the employee engagement process.
Vantage Fit offers all the above features and several customization options for organizations to boost their employee wellness game. It provides a flawless portal and a customizable employee wellness dashboard for seamless metrics collection.
Find out more about what Vantage Fit has to offer by booking a demo with us today!
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How much does an Employee Wellness Portal cost?
The cost of a corporate wellness portal varies depending on the features offered and the vendor chosen. Get quotes from multiple vendors before you choose one for your organization.
2. Can an Employee Wellness Portal be integrated with other HR systems?
Yes, a wellness portal can be easily and flawlessly integrated with other HR systems.
3. What are the best wellness apps?
Popular wellness apps include Vantage Fit (Employee Wellness), Headspace (mindfulness), MyFitnessPal (nutrition), and Fitbit (activity tracking).
4. What are the common metrics to track in the wellness portal?
Some common metrics to track in a wellness portal are participation rates, program engagement, healthy activities (e.g., weight loss, step count), and employee satisfaction.
5. When is the right time to introduce a wellness portal app in the organization?
There is no right time for employee wellness. You should not wait for an organizational fallout to introduce a wellness platform.
6. Can I use the wellness portal for remote employees?
Yes, modern wellness portals are easily available for remote employees. You can track all kinds of health data for them on there.
7. Can a wellness portal be integrated with a wellness dashboard?
Yes, an employee wellness portal can be easily and seamlessly integrated with a corporate wellness dashboard for effective reporting and analysis.
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