Designing A Workplace Wellness Program

While designing a workplace wellness program that meets your requirements as well as the requirements of your workforce may seem overwhelming, it does not have to be. At the time of designing an employee wellness program, it is important to keep the following points in mind:

1. Decide the goals of your wellness program

The first and foremost step is to identify your goals. For a lot of organizations, this means dropping health care costs. Getting into collaboration with a third party administrator or an insurance company could reveal other trends of health care cost that are required to be addressed.

2. Decide the level of involvement of the organization

The second step is to fix on a level of intensity for your wellness program. This is majorly influenced by company and industry culture. A company can have:

• Low: Little or low company involvement; this is when employees earn their rewards outside of work on their own time. The organization may host a few small events for employees.
• Middle: Adequate company involvement; this is when employees enjoy some onsite activities for earning their rewards.
• High: In the case of high company involvement, the company invests a noteworthy amount of time and money into onsite events for employee wellness.

3. Decide employee rewards

Rewards largely increase the likelihood of employees in getting involved in a workplace wellness program. It’s simple to reward individuals who already follow a healthy lifestyle. The real challenge is to inspire and motivate those who don’t, and the ones who are probably employing health care services on a reactive basis, rather than a preventive basis. There are various forms of rewards like points that can be exchanged for goods, celebrating accomplishments, gifts, or monetary rewards.

You might be interested in Non-monetary ways to reward your employees

4. Write and communicate your wellness policy

Your policy must embrace your company’s intent, rewards system, the level of involvement, combined with an acknowledgement of legal considerations. By detailing the level of involvement of your organization, employees recognize what they can expect from the program and what types of events and activities the organization will be sponsoring.

The bottom line is, that these programs must motivate employees towards wellness.  High employee job satisfaction, enhanced morale, less presenteeism, and absenteeism can really help improve your organization in numerous ways.