Employee health and wellness programs have long been a part of benefits packages. Once a unique way to engage employees, has now become standard. Whether the program takes the form of a stipend for taking on healthier living, offering wellness groups that meet from the office or group fitness activities for employees hosted by an employer, health and wellness programs are a reliable way to drive employee engagement and improve overall employee experience.
This blog will show how incorporating incentives into your program, like promoting a healthy work environment with gift cards can positively impact your employees and your business.
Promoting a Healthy Work Environment
Promoting a healthy work environment can mean a lot of things. It can be supporting work-life balance, offering flexibility in employees’ schedules to ensure they can form and maintain healthy habits or it can be a formal employee incentive program focused on health and wellness. Incorporating gift cards into employee health and wellness programs can:
- Drive engagement to the program
- Maintain employees’ interest in the program
- Keep employees focused on healthy habits within their work environment
Sponsoring a healthy work environment doesn’t need to break your budget. Gift cards for wellness programs offer flexibility with denominations and volume of cards, allowing you to promote a healthy work environment that fits any budget.
Lowering Healthcare Costs
Healthcare costs are usually the biggest benefit cost for employers, and they are also typically the biggest deduction from employees’ paychecks. Reducing healthcare costs for both parties is a win-win. When a general employee population is healthy, carrying less preventable chronic conditions like diabetes, smoking and high blood pressure, healthcare premiums can often drop. Employee health and wellness programs can be a powerful tool to get your total employee population on a path to better health. Wellness initiatives for companies with gift card rewards:
- Unite employees around a common goal to get healthier together
- Encourage employees to make healthier choices with the benefit of potentially lowering their premiums
- Provide a monetary value to drive momentum and engagement within the health and wellness program
It can be sensitive to tackle healthcare costs as a whole company, but using incentives to drive engagement can help keep employees focused on the mission and provide a memorable experience for employees to associate their employer as an entity that cares about their personal health and wellbeing. This can be compelling when driving employee loyalty.
Build Employee Engagement
Employee health and wellness programs are a great way to build culture at your company and to get employees involved beyond their core work responsibilities. Employee health and wellness gift card programs can help build momentum to get employees involved in new health and wellness programs or to help expand existing programs. Gift cards can support programs by:
- Creating a positive association with the program and the employer
- Building a lasting memory of the program based on the experience employees have using their gift cards
- Supporting the continuation of healthy habits in and out of the workplace
The Engage2Reward™ Choice card can be a great place to start incorporating gift cards into you employee health and wellness program. The Engage2Reward Choice Card provides total flexibility and choice as your recipients can redeem online from over 250 different retailers for any eGift card of their choice. This allows you to make your gift card experience easy and expedient to drive program engagement for both your program administrator and employees.
Improve Employee Experience
Employers should always keep a pulse on employee experience with an eye toward employees’ total interaction with the company from their first day until their last. Employee experience can’t stay stagnant and programs need to rotate to keep employees engaged and motivated for what’s to come. Workplace wellness programs with gift cards are a great program option to diversify your company’s portfolio of employee experience offerings. These programs can:
- Offer something different than a simple performance-based reward program
- Reinforce the company’s commitment to wellness
- Motivate employees to reach health and wellness goals alongside employees- building team dynamics and camaraderie
In today’s tight labor market employee experience should always be a focus for employers and adding in wellness initiatives with gift card rewards is another way to strengthen any employee experience effort.
Conclusion
Employee health and wellness programs are a reliable way to strengthen your company culture, lower overall group healthcare costs and keep employees motivated and engaged with work. Incorporating gift card rewards into your wellness initiatives provides the incentive some employees will need to commit to the program, and the investment is worth the long-term return of satisfied, healthy employees.
Learn more about how Engage2Reward Choice Card can support your health and wellness initiatives today!
