Now more than ever, companies are trying to implement new corporate wellness solutions and perfect their existing ones. With employees remote and having concerns over their health and safety amidst a pandemic, managers promoting health and balance throughout the workplace is essential to drive employee engagement and success. But not all corporate wellness solutions are created equal. Here are a few dos and don’ts of corporate wellness solutions, and how BetterYou can fit into your company’s wellness plan.
Dos of Corporate Wellness
1. Community.
While remote work can have employees feeling less engaged in the company culture, this doesn’t have to be the case. Community is one of the strongest tools to build a healthy and engaged culture. Wellness initiatives should involve team members working together, like a virtual office step challenge by department or a socially distanced workout class. Encourage employees to leverage each other as accountability partners. Research shows that publicly committing your goals to someone gives you a 65% chance of completing them, at least. What’s more, having a specific accountability partner increases that success rate to 95%.
2. Holistic and creative approach.
Corporate wellness is about more than holding a weight loss contest or bringing in healthy snacks, though there is a place for that. Along with physical health, mental and social health should be just as much of a priority. As a manager, listen to employees and respond to their needs. The most successful corporate wellness solution is one that actually solves what the employees want solved. For example, a company heard people needed bikes to get into work on time. So, they made a bike pass part of their employee benefits package.
3. Simple and easy changes.
One of the biggest reasons workplace wellness initiatives fail is that they’re too complex, time consuming, or just plain hard. Managers shouldn’t be asking employees to make big changes, and stick to them via brute force. Rather, employees should be expected to focus on bite-sized changes and habits implemented in their daily routines. Swap out their morning donut in the office for a banana. Move your desk away from the snack area of the office. Take the afternoon meeting as a walking meeting. We recommend sharing a guide on habit stacking to employees as a guide to making small, healthy changes part of the routine they already do. With this method, healthy changes are almost effortless.
Interested in learning more about how we can help your employee population improve their steps and sleep while reducing burnout? Visit our For Businesses page today.
Don’ts of Corporate Wellness
1. Overuse of incentives.
Overusing incentives can actually backfire, making employees less interested in healthy habits once the program is over. See our article on the Tom Sawyer effect here. Rather, incentives should be used sparingly in addition to other fun wellness initiatives, and shouldn’t be a crutch to lean on. Employees should be internally motivated to be healthier, and excess incentives affect that intrinsic motivation.
2. Information overload.
If communication is too frequent or you’re holding a different contest every week, employees may lose interest and disengage. Try to keep wellness communication to a biweekly basis, if possible. Read more on information overload with employee wellness here.
Is BetterYou your next corporate wellness solution?
If you’re looking for a one-stop shop that hits all the “dos” and none of the “don’ts,” BetterYou might be the right fit for your company. We’re a digital health coaching app so simple that employees use it in the long term. We have engagement rates almost twice that of popular health apps like MyFitnessPal. The simplicity comes from the fact that BetterYou works in the background, requiring no manual entry. Employees don’t need to remember to enter stats, and can see real-time progress toward their health goals.
BetterYou is holistic as users set goals in four areas of health: physical, social, educational and mindfulness. We believe they all depend on each other, and prioritizing these four areas means protecting wellness and preventing many common physical and mental health problems.
Want to learn more about how BetterYou is rethinking corporate wellness solutions and what the app can do for employee engagement and wellness? Email seanhiggins@betteryou.ai to book a 30-minute demo.
