Employee health and wellness continues to grow in importance and sophistication. Established vendors are fine-tuning their offerings while newer players are making waves with innovative angles.
We're seeing lots of activity with challenges and competitions, gaming and social wellness platforms, and different ways to win incentives and rewards.
These newer offerings can do a pretty good job at generating interest - even some excitement - and often succeed in getting individuals to sign up for something fun. Unfortunately, most of these ideas are tactical in nature, generally limited in duration, and don't necessarily connect to bigger picture initiatives.
Separately, the industry is in the midst of a firestorm of sorts with critics vocally slamming many of the practices of suppliers, consultants and supporters.
Some of the criticism is warranted. Wellness programs don't always produce stellar results. But rather than blame wellness, it's time to take a new look at how we design, develop and deliver programs in the workplace.
With more and more employers now on the wellness bandwagon, they are tending to look to industry norms and best practice for guidance on how to proceed. It's been well documented that most successful initiatives include the following:
• Smart program design
• Strong leadership endorsement
• Effective communications outreach
• Relevant incentives and reinforcement
• Supportive environment and culture
• Strong leadership endorsement
• Effective communications outreach
• Relevant incentives and reinforcement
• Supportive environment and culture
Few would argue as to the importance of these areas, and most wellness leaders work diligently to ensure that each are smartly addressed.
But even with these factors in place, there is significant opportunity to do more. We see the need to weave in three essential components to round out the mix and maximize the investment value.
1. Strategy. A solid and sustainable health and wellness programs needs smart strategy. There is too much reliance on bright and shiny tactical elements and not nearly enough on the fundamental rationale for why the programs are being offered, how they are designed, when they are delivered, and how much impact they create. Doing this better may require a different mix of wellness leaders, with more emphasis on business discipline and accountability.
2. Integration. A good wellness program should be run like a brand marketing campaign. Focusing on the end user, all communication, information, interaction and intervention elements need to be aligned and sequenced so they comes across as a seamless story to the consumer. This burden falls to the wellness leadership team or primary vendor, and it requires mapping out the user experience to identify gaps and opportunities. Too many initiatives are "multi-silo" and lead to inefficiencies and lost opportunities.
3. Engagement. Current the hottest topic in employee health and wellness, engagement will actually improve naturally if the first two ingredients are properly implemented. But to really heighten impact, we must know the population better. Having a system or methodology to collect feedback and uncover consumer insights will help to generate deeper understanding of the population and could also identify segmentation opportunities. This can lead to tailored messaging and program variation to address certain segments, and potentially, even individual personality profiles.
These three ingredients help complete the recipe. They add necessary flavor and spice to help make the overall entire entrée more palatable and rather delicious.
But they are not just "additives" - they are essential to ensuring the human capital investment in health and wellness is properly resourced, allocated and delivered.
Companies with true commitment to success will find that it comes naturally to blend in these ingredients, and they will help to produce positive behavior change and meaningful outcomes.
Frank Hone is Chief Engagement Officer of Healthcentric Partners ( http://www.healthcentricpartners.com ), the first and only engagement strategy and marketing consultancy for employee health and well-being improvement. The firm supports companies committed to encouraging health behavior change in their workforce. Our strategic frameworks and consumer marketing orientation help increase participation in your programs. "We don't create health and well-being improvement programs, we help ensure they connect and perform better." Contact Frank at frank.hone@healthcentricpartners.com or call 917 375-7716.
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