Ways to Build Employee Engagement In Your Corporate Wellness Program

Corporate wellness programs are regarded successful only if they drive active participation and people are engaged in them. When a number of people commit to adopting a healthier lifestyle, the results can be absolutely amazing. Increased productivity, improved morale, and lower health care costs are just the tip of the iceberg for employers. This doesn’t even take into consideration the value of healthy and happy employees. But with very few employees putting efforts to improve their health on their own, employers are seeking different ways to engage employees in wellness.

Employees usually consider their wellness program as a mandate imposed on them by their superiors as a tool to increase productivity. What most of these wellness programs fail to answer is “Why should an employee use this program?” If the employees only see a wellness program as a way of increasing their productivity, their engagement will be superficial. They will simply participate in the wellness program because their company imposed it on them. However, for an employee wellness program to be successful users have to show a sustained engagement.

The current state of Workplace Wellness includes companies that offer occasional health checks and informational resources to spread awareness about healthy living. However, these offerings fail to motivate employees and hence engage them to actually develop a healthy lifestyle. Below mentioned are four ways that can help you boost engagement in your employee wellness program:

1. Make It Interesting

Be it any game or competition, we’re more likely to get motivated and involved when our friends get involved. This flicker can spread like wildfire and can get your entire organization engaged. Social incentives are a cost-effective and captivating way to recruit as well as engage all those who may otherwise are beyond your reach.

Social incentives are simple. Setting up teams provides accountability, social support, the spirit of friendly competition, altruistic opportunities and public recognition. With social incentives, people easily adopt healthy behaviours because they are liable to participate in group activities as well as help others. Over time, these all these activities become part of the lifestyle, drive healthy behaviours and create lasting effects on health.

2. Track, Report, & Update

Participating in a challenge, people would want to know their performance against all those around them. This information provides a benchmark for success and allows the people to track their performance and keep the competitive spirit going.

At the time of hosting wellness activities, it is always recommended to share results with all the employees who participated in the activity. For example, if you’re organizing a walking challenge, inform everyone regarding their step count and the average step count of an employee walking per day. Update weekly reports of what’s going on, who are performing well, and what steps should others take to jump into the action as well as provide a recap of all the amazing activities that have been going on.

3. Use The Power Of Social

When you put an effort and exercise, the people surrounding you are more likely to get inspired and exercise. This might appear intuitive, but these forces are really powerful! By utilizing this insight and a slight imagination, you can enhance the health of the population at large.

To put it simply, people get involved through social recruiting, and further accountability and social support keep them engaged. When you promise a friend to meet at 6 a.m. for a run, you’re going to turn up anyhow, regardless of snow, rain, cold, or perfect weather. You won’t let your promise go in vain or let your friend down. The similar concept can be scaled as well as applied to corporate wellness programs. With a social approach to wellness, the whole organization can be engaged in walking meetings and friendly challenges, comparing each other’s step totals and pushing one another to attain their wellness goals.

4. Gamification

We all like to be rewarded for our actions – it gives us a sense of satisfaction that enables us to keep performing reward-worthy tasks. This gamification concept is the number one solution to boost engagement in any kind of program. For instance, even successful loyalty programs have a gamified platform where they reward buyers for shopping. Truworth Wellness has incorporated this concept of gamification in its comprehensive wellness platform. It helps users earn reward points for completing every single task, whether it is logging in daily, tracking their vitals, reading articles, or exercising every day. They can later redeem those points for exciting prizes.

Furthermore, for a gamification strategy to be successful, it is crucial to identify the sources of motivation and correct procedures to engage people. Wellness programs will be more exciting if, in addition to rewards, users are given a way of sharing their achievements with their peers. We provide an inbuilt social network where people can share their accomplishments with their friends and colleagues. Users would not only be able to support their friends but also get motivated to perform healthy actions.

Benefits of Employee Involvement

• You encourage better performance
• You attract and promote talent
• You quickly spot HR issues
• You build-up better products
• You become more profitable
• Your customer satisfaction increases
• You uplift your teams
• Your turnover costs decreases
• Your ideas become sharper

Just like diseases, healthy behaviours are contagious too. We are more likely to exercise when we see our friends exercise. This creates a long-lasting user engagement as employees have a sense of inherent motivation to participate in a wellness program. Truworth Wellness ensures that employees participate in the program to keep themselves healthy and happy instead of simply increasing their productivity.