Wellness Programs

Healthier employees set your company up to succeed, with better morale, lower insurance premiums and more days spent in the office, not having critical doctor visits. Implementing wellness programs can improve your employees’ well-being and strengthen camaraderie, leading to even more creativity and collaboration.

Here are five suggestions to make your wellness campaigns a success:

Help participants build connections

Making healthy choices is hard, but your employees are much more likely to get involved and stay involved if they can chat with peers about their progress both online and at the watercooler — it can even build up to some healthy competition. Plus, they’ll carry those connections back into their work, with chemistry that makes collaboration easier.

Show your leaders breaking a sweat

This one is twofold. It’s humanizing to see leaders struggling toward the end of a plank or talking through how to hold Warrior I pose, and having your CEO or another executive involved will also immediately lend credibility to your campaign. Featuring your leaders will engage employees much more than an external vendor’s content would.

Encourage sustainable long-term goals

It’s easy to hype people up to eat healthy and work out every day — for about 10 days, maybe two weeks if you’re lucky. If you want your employees to live healthier lives over years and decades, suggest small changes that can morph into long-term habits, like eating breakfast each morning or putting phones down an hour before bed.

Emphasize wellness, not just thinness

Everyone has different health needs, and it’s too generalizing to prioritize weight loss as a gold-standard health goal in your wellness campaigns. Instead, refer to broader targets, like maintaining a balanced diet, an active lifestyle, positive mental health practices and strong social connections, which are all correlated with a long, healthy life.

Connect them with other interests

While some of your employees will be thrilled to enter a push-up competition or run the company 5K, that’s likely the minority. Connect your wellness campaigns with charitable initiatives and holidays to pique their interest. With support from other programs, employees are much more likely to make the first move, which is the hardest part.