A good corporate wellness program can pay impressive dividends, and help keep your entire team at a good level of mental fitness. However, not all corporate wellness programs are destined to work out. This piece will go over some common mistakes of setting up corporate wellness plans, and how to design one that really works for your company and employees.
A Corporate Wellness Program implies some sort of initiative to increase corporate wellness. But what exactly does that mean? The term can mean different things to different people, but in general, a company with high corporate wellness is a place that encourages healthier lifestyle choices for its employees.
Such workplace wellness can take many forms and have many facets to it, which is what makes achieving such employee wellness often difficult. Wellness can mean physical fitness, but it can mean mental fitness as well.
By the above definition, a corporate wellness program is simply any sort of initiative taken by your company with the goal of improving workplace wellness. However, different corporate wellness programs can work in very different ways. It’s better to think of such a program as a series of individual initiatives decided on by management to try and improve employee wellness.
These initiatives can take different forms. They could involve a physical change to an office space, such as including amenities like kitchens, gyms, and places to relax. It can also involve attempts to change workplace culture through workshops. It can even be a long-term process with health coaching and stress management seminars.
As you can tell, this kind of program can be a lot of work to set up and maintain, especially if you are trying to run multiple initiatives at once. Many might be tempted to wonder if it’s worth it to engage in a corporate wellness program at all. After all, couldn’t you just give employees the time off that they would be spending attending the corporate wellness program?
The facts don’t lie, however, and research shows that employee wellness translates directly into more attentive and engaged employees. Just a little bit of time spent on workplace wellness can be the difference between retaining a motivated and happy workforce, and suffering from mass quitting and discontent. That leaves the question though – how do you make a corporate wellness program that really works?
While it can be easy for an expert on employee wellness to understand the benefits of a good corporate wellness program, those same employees can sometimes have difficulty understanding the benefits of such a program. It’s vital that you design a program for employee health education that everyone can get on board with. So it’s key that you avoid common mistakes when building your program – like the following:
A good corporate wellness program is one that is able to continuously update and improve itself to take into account current events and trends. For example, did you know that most good wellness programs today will include biometric screenings to help workers feel more secure in the age of pandemics? While you can control the sources of stress within your workplace, you can’t always control them outside. So it’s important to understand what’s going on in your nation and community and react accordingly.
We mentioned earlier a few examples of initiatives that could be part of a corporate wellness program. The real secret to success, however, is being able to cover all of your bases. This means that you need to cover physical activity as much as mental fitness. You should be just as willing to help give medical aid to your employees as you are to provide chances for socializing. Just focusing on a single initiative is going to leave some employees, with specific wellness needs, behind.
On that note, you need to be comprehensive not just in what you offer, but who you are offering it to. As we said, some employees are going to need specific wellness needs. Remote workers might care more about chances to socialize and fight isolation. Employees with certain disabilities will need more help with physical fitness than simply getting a gym membership.
If your virtual wellness seminars just involve you talking to your employees about the importance of workplace wellness, it’s probably that you’re not going to make much headway in actually promoting better employee wellness. Corporate wellness programs shouldn’t view employee wellness as a problem to be solved. Rather it should be a way to give employees the tools to help attack their own wellness problems. A good portion of workplace wellness is simply developing the mental and physical routines to deal with stress. You should be trying to take on an educational role, not giving out mandates to “force” wellness.
Employee wellness is serious business, yes. But if you’re making your corporate wellness program into something stressful, aren’t you defeating the entire purpose of the program in the first place? If you think of building a corporate wellness program like a chore, your employees are going to view it as a chore as well, and the entire enterprise will be doomed from the start.
So make sure that you leave plenty of time in your workplace wellness programs for things like virtual team-building exercises, virtual happy hours, and other ways for employees to socialize, connect and just have plain fun.
As you can see, a truly great corporate wellness program is a continuing journey, for you and for your employees. It can be a lot to take on alone. Thankfully, Liberate acts as an extension of you and your team. Make sure to check out our team programs, and get started on improving your workplace wellness today! A good corporate wellness program can pay impressive dividends, and help keep your entire team at a good level of mental fitness. However, not all corporate wellness programs are destined to work out. This piece will go over some common mistakes of setting up corporate wellness plans, and how to design one that really works for your company and employees.
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