Top 5 Factors for a Successful Corporate Wellness Program
Companies spend billions of dollars in various wellness programs, but still find themselves having issues with employee productivity and talent retention. With the global economy slowly recovering, attracting top talent, and managing talents are becoming more crucial for the organisation to keep its competitive edge.
Having an effective corporate wellness program can not only keep the workforce healthy, but also be a good selling point for potential talents. Hence, designing and rolling out a successful corporate wellness program is getting more and more critical.
During the COVID pandemic, employees experienced high levels of stress. Amidst country lockdowns and massive job losses, companies were on survival mode and employees had to constantly adapt to numerous changes - from taking on more work with a smaller workforce to using new digital tools and to working remotely.
"...when employees experience burnout and exit the workforce, the bottom line of companies will be significantly affected."
All these changes had a huge impact on employee wellness so much so that companies need to review their corporate wellness programs. With remote working, employees are not only feeling isolated, but also experiencing anxiety and depression; thereby affecting their physical and mental health. Businesses have to change the way they treat their employees to maintain high performance and productivity. More attention needs to be focused on the overall being of the employees. Otherwise, when employees experience burnout and exit the workforce, the bottom line of companies will be significantly affected.
1. Corporate Wellness - KYE
The 3Ws - Who, What, Which
To have a successful corporate wellness program, it has to be customised to the needs of your employees. Hence the first step is to "Know Your Employee" and what is the employee profile of your workforce. It is critical to know Who they are (age, gender, race and others) and What are their needs. In a multi-generational workforce, a generation Z employee will use wellness services that are completely different to the needs of a senior employee.
Knowing the Who and the What will then determine Which wellness program will be good to invest on. Avoiding the trap of blindly getting what's the most popular wellness services at the moment will help in ensuring that money is well invested in the wellness programs that your employees need. As a result, this will improve employee satisfaction.
2. Corporate Wellness – Active & Engaged Leadership
The strong support of the leadership team is essential for the success of any wellness program. With employees feeling isolated, anxious and even burnout, business leaders need to show that they care for their workforce. Having a great corporate wellness program is just part of the solution. Despite the business pressures, leaders need to show by example that they strongly believe in employee wellness. To do so, they not only need to be part of the wellness campaign, but they themselves also participate and even engage with their workforce.
There is no point having an extensive wellness program, when all that the employees see is their bosses slogging till late at night and being a slave driver. If the situation is not rectified, employee attrition rate will rise significantly, and the organisation will get into a vicious cycle of backfilling employees that are walking out of the door. Having a great wellness program can not only keep employees engaged and productive, but also be a great talent magnet for the organisation.
3. Corporate Wellness – Communication & Promotion
One of the key success factors of a good corporate wellness program is "Communication & Promotion". Promoting the corporate wellness program can not only be part of the overall corporate culture, but also send a strong signal to all employees that the company put great emphasis on their wellbeing. With greater promotion, employees will also have a better understanding of all the wellness services available to them.
Getting the wellness message across to the employees can be a 2-way communication. Telling employees about the corporate wellness program and the reasons for focusing on their overall wellbeing can promote trust and greater cohesion among the team members. Moreover, getting feedback about what is good and bad about the wellness program can enable the leadership and management to tweak and/or re-design the overall corporate wellness program.
4. Corporate Wellness – RACE to Health
For corporate wellness programs to be success, they need to be constantly reviewed and HR leaders can apply the RACE (Refreshing, Accessible, Customisable and Easy) concept in managing their wellness programs. Besides integrating wellness at the core of the organisational culture, HR leaders need to refresh the programs so as keep employees interested and engaged.
Moreover, some of wellness benefits like gym and yoga studios need to be accessible to employees. There is no point having these benefits when employees need to commute long distance to reach their destination. Furthermore, with multi-generational workforce, wellness programs need to be customisable. What a baby boomer employee needs may not be what a generation z employee wants. Hence there is a need to have a plethora of services that suit the needs of most employees. Last but not least, all these wellness services need to be easy for employees to access and use.
5. Corporate Wellness - Most Bang for Your Buck
Despite the fact that companies keep on investing significantly on their wellness programs, employee satisfaction does not improve massively. One reason for this situation is that companies do not regularly review and monitor the effectiveness of their wellness programs. Hence, to ensure the relevance of the various wellness services, companies must monitor the usage and employee satisfaction. Moreover, to get the most out of all wellness programs for the employees, companies should constantly review how they are investing their wellness budget and whether the benefit brought about commensurate to the money spent.
