How to Implement Effective Employee Wellness Programs
Implementing employee wellness programs can save your organization money in both employee absenteeism and employee productivity, and can help control costs of health care benefits. Here are a few ways to ensure the implementation of your wellness programs is successful.
Make Sure the Program Is Comprehensive: Make sure your health and wellness programs focus on all aspects of employees' everyday lives. Build a community of wellness, focusing on every day areas of concern like exercise, healthy eating and stress management. Build community by creating an office running club, softball league or weight loss group.
Engage Employees: Center your wellness programs around results, while engaging employees into the program. Ensure employees set goals, whether they are weight loss related, fitness related, or focused on healthy eating (does anyone really
need that 3rd cup of coffee?). On the other side, reward employees for reaching their goals, or for investing themselves in the program. Small rewards like small denomination gift cards to healthy retailers like
GNC or CVS/pharmacy will be a treat for employees, showing them that their employer cares for their well-being and wants to help them down the road of healthy behavior.
How to Foster Employee Loyalty
Compensation: Compensating employees can take many forms, and in order to foster employee loyalty compensation should extend beyond a paycheck. Standard payment is important, however finding innovative ways to compensate employees will help maintain loyalty among your workforce. Using spot rewards, like small denomination gift cards to popular retailers like
CVS/Pharmacy,
The Cheesecake Factory and
The Limited is a great way to show employees you noticed extra effort on a specific project, or appreciated them staying late one night.
Environment: Creating a comfortable environment where goals are clearly stated and communication is clear between peers and from managers to their team is key in creating a culture of loyalty. Working hard and having fun as a team will form relationships and camaraderie that foster loyalty, job satisfaction and improved productivity.
Employees Wellness Programs Pay for Themselves
By now you are probably familiar with the new laws that took effect as part of the Affordable Care Act earlier this summer. Employers can now offer incentives totaling 30% of total plan cost (they used to only be able to offer 20%) to employees who are healthy, taking preventative measures to stay healthy, or meeting goals to get healthier. The idea is that employers should encourage wellness (not just for the greater good of society) because it cuts down on absenteeism and the cost of health care benefits for the employer…and the benefits keep coming. A review of 72 studies in the American Journal of Health Promotion revealed these staggering figures:
Who Is Engaged at Your Office?
Following the release of the 2013 Gallup "State of the American Workforce" study revealed some astonishing things about how much work employers have to do to engage their employees, since a whopping 70% indicated they were either not engaged or actively disengaged at work. The study also revealed which employees were more likely to be engaged at work. Did you know millenials and traditionalists (people at the beginning and end of their careers) are most likely to feel engaged in their jobs? Only 28% of Generation Xer's and 26% of Baby Boomers indicated they felt engaged at work. These numbers are indicative of a lapse in engagement in the workforce. Whether you engage employees in a health and wellness program (see who can lose the most weight), or a safety program, or provide professional development training and executive access, make sure your employees are happy. Disengaged employees cost an estimated $450-$550 billion per year in lost productivity. Keep your employees happy by providing perks and creating a company culture where team comes first and exceptional accomplishments are recognized. When an employee reaches a goal provide a reward like a summer Friday afternoon off, or small denomination gift cards to popular retailers like AutoZone, CVS/pharmacy or Boston Market, allowing employees to choose their own reward. Engaging employees at work will keep them with your organization longer and help improve your bottom line.
For more information about engaging employees and the new Gallup "State of the American Workforce" Study check out this article from Loyalty360.
Why High Employee Engagement Works for You
It is well established that highly engaged employees work harder and stay happier in their jobs longer. A
new study from Gallup further proves that employee engagement actual drives up productivity and satisfaction to the point where engaging employees is affecting organizations' bottom lines. The study reveals that companies who don't make employee engagement a strategic priority can hurt their revenue because their employees are absent more, their turnover rate is higher, and when employees are at work they simply don't get as much done. Here are some quick facts from Gallup:
