How to Engage Employees in a Corporate Wellness Program

A motivating workplace wellness program may enhance the health and wellness of each employee and help to create a culture of well-being inside the business.

On paper, wellness programs may be brilliant, but they may not work in practice. Your program must deliver value to employees to work in the real world. Getting your staff to participate actively in a wellness program is the most crucial step in its implementation.

Customers frequently ask us how to get more people to participate in their programs. It's a wonderful question, so we've compiled some of our top strategies for motivating staff below!

What exactly is employee engagement?

Think of engagement as participation that is active. Employees that are engaged are driven to devote time and effort to a corporate wellness program.

Simply participating might be passive. Take into account workers who go through the motions and do the barest minimum to be counted as participating. They probably aren't getting much use out of the program.

Value is driven by engagement, on the other side. It encourages participants to stay with the program and return. Along with their coworkers, engaged employee actively contributes to creating a supportive culture. They participate voluntarily and value the benefits your wellness program offers to their general happiness and well-being.

In wellness challenges, this can entail daily score checks or encouraging one another.

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Why is engagement important?

It might be difficult to persuade people to alter their behavior or make time for their health. If a program appeals to a person's sense of enjoyment, curiosity, and relevance to their daily lives, they are more likely to remain with it.

Workplace wellness initiatives, according to the CDC, "are only as effective as the proportion of employees who are truly engaged in the program."* Create a program that your staff will truly want to participate in if you want to know how to get them involved in wellness initiatives.

1. Communicate With Your Participants

First things first: focus on the beneficiaries of your program. Start by getting to know your workforce, particularly how they feel about their health.

There will probably be a wide range of hobbies and wellness issues among your participants. The task at hand is to create a comprehensive umbrella program. Your strategy can be more inclusive the better you comprehend the trends in the health needs of your employees.

2. Conduct A Survey Of Employee Interest

Before creating your program, if possible, poll your staff. Employees now have a chance to express their ideas, queries, and worries. Additionally, it enables you to customize your program for greater involvement. If at all possible, we advise making the poll anonymous to ensure sincere responses.

3. Remain Visible And Accessible For Your Programme

"Out of sight, out of mind" Some wellness programs get off to an exciting and buzzy start but fade away amid the daily grind. This is particularly valid for programs that are challenging to use or traverse. How can you prevent this?

Keep everybody informed: Post reminders about your program in locations that are frequently visited by your staff. Physical office premises or virtual locations like common communication channels or portals can serve as these.

Remind log-in users: Remind staff to log in and check wellness platforms and apps frequently if they use them.

4. Host Wellness Challenges

It's simple to increase employee health and engagement through wellness challenges and health-related events. Challenges can be themed around a variety of subjects and may include 5k races, step competitions, and habit-tracking tasks. We advise limiting your challenges between 1 week and 1 month to prevent challenge burnout.

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5. Create A Wellness Community

Invite team members or interested staff members from throughout your organization to assist in managing your wellness program. To have more help on hand and guarantee that your programming works smoothly all year long, form a wellness committee. A wellness committee should have between two and five members. By doing this, you may see things from additional angles without having too many cooks in the kitchen.

Members of a wellness committee can assist with program promotion and employee inquiries.

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Ensure Managers Are Participating

Make sure managers are leading by example in participating in your program and inspiring staff to do the same.

The following are some suggestions for how team leads might encourage engagement:

Organize a "beat the boss" day where employees strive to outdo their supervisors or company executives.

Ask managers to connect with any content you provide visibly. They can "like" resources and leave comments to help spark a discussion.

Ask team leaders for their top wellness advice: Send out a newsletter or wellness channel to your staff members with their suggestions.

Managers should incorporate wellness checks into 1:1s: During check-ins, managers can encourage staff to prioritize their wellness.

Host a “Join Me” series: Have leaders select classes they would like to participate in, such as fitness classes, meditation classes, or nutritious cooking classes. Then, have them invite employees to join by signing up for the class.

Ask managers to share reminders: This is simple but impactful! Managers can remind their teams about how to participate in your program or any upcoming events. This communicates that they see the value in their teams engaging in the program.

Lastly,

Ask managers to share reminders: This is simple but impactful! Managers can remind their teams about how to participate in your program or any upcoming events. This communicates that they see the value in their teams engaging in the program.

Just because it's on your calendar doesn't mean you should continue with a bad plan. To make sure your program meets the needs of your employees, solicit feedback frequently and act on it.