How to Build a Workplace Wellness Programme Your Employees Will Actually Use

Introducing an employee wellness program sounds simple on the face of it. It’s an extension of the benefits you already offer, but if you spend time and money implementing it and no one uses it, then it’s a massive waste of time, effort, and funding for something to simply become background noise.

But with more and more employees wanting to see benefits and resources of this nature available to them, how do you go about creating something that is beneficial and actually used by the people you’re creating it for.

Let’s dive into it.

Find Out What Employees Actually Want

Before you do anything else, you need to talk to your employees. Get to know what they want and need without just guessing and going with general features and benefits.

Do not put out a tick survey box with pre-determined aspects; let them tell you what they would find useful, what isn’t necessary, and include genuine qualitative questions that deliver real insight into your workforce.

Questions like what is stopping them from prioritizing their health, what would make a tangible difference to their life, what benefit they currently have access to but don’t use, and so on. The answers to these will give you a good base to work from, so you know what to include and what to avoid, so it is not a waste of time and money. Don’t try to assume anything here; also, ask the right questions, and this will do most of the hard work for you.

Identify The Gaps

Once you have your data from here, you need to map it against what you currently offer, if anything.

Mental health support, physical activity, financial wellness, nutrition, social connections, etc. They’re all good components to include, but not every business needs everything, and this is where the above point is massively beneficial. The aim here isn’t to cover all your bases, but the ones that are in most need by your employees.

Use your feedback to identify the gaps that people mention. If people are telling you they’re burnt out and are dealing with high stress levels, then a step challenge isn’t going to fix it. If financial anxiety is coming up and over, introducing gym benefits won’t help here either. This stage prioritizes what you need to do so you’re not offering things people don’t need.

Set Measurable Goals

What are you looking to resolve with this wellness program? That’s the fundamental question behind this. You need to know how to introduce it so you can set goals for it to be effective.

Are you looking to reduce absenteeism, improve engagement scores, lower healthcare costs? Knowing the ultimate aim can enable you to unlock the approach you need to take before you approach any provider about collaborating with you on this venture.

Be specific here, “improving employee wellness” isn’t a metric you can track, “reducing absenteeism by 15% in the next quarter”, however, is.

Define Your Budget

Most wellness programs fail when the money is assigned, but without any outcomes explained or attached to the spending. Before spending anything or approaching anyone, you need to know what justifies the investment and where your non-negotiables are.

This will shape every conversation you have moving forward. You need a clear budget with clear expectations, and you need to make sure that you can secure long-term ongoing sustainability for it to work as you need it to.

Get The Framework and Infrastructure in Place

This is the part where your program takes shape. The decisions made here will determine if your program is suitable or not.

Who owns it internally? Is there a dedicated team or person responsible for it, or is it being managed as an afterthought? Programs without clear ownership drift that’s a fact, and if you’re not assigning ownership, you’ll experience the same outcomes.

Ideally, it needs to be integrated with other systems you have in place so employees aren’t being asked to navigate something new and separate.

This is where the white-label wellness platform comes into the picture. It will allow you to deliver a branded experience embedded platform within your existing infrastructure, and you’re removing an important barrier that would keep people from using it here.

Make It Inclusive

A program that is designed for office-based 9-5 workers will exclude shift workers, remote staff, and employees with disabilities, as well as employees at different life stages. You need to make sure it’s inclusive. This is not optional, it’s standard. What you offer needs to be beneficial to everyone working for the company, no exceptions.

Think about access, timing, and where the physical activity component works for everyone. Think about those who can’t leave a site in the middle of a shift to go to the gym. Or are your mental health resources available outside of working hours for someone who wouldn’t feel comfortable accessing them at their desks? Small details, but understanding and including them in your approach will make a huge amount of difference to help people use the benefits.

Bring Employees On Board Prior to Launch

Here’s the thing: you don’t just want to include people at the early stages; you need to run it past them prior to launching and get feedback. Run a pilot group including a mix of people working for you, not all from the same shift pattern or demographic. Get a range including all abilities, ages, and variables you can.

Then you can get them to give you feedback on what does and what doesn’t work, what you need to exchange, and what needs to go before you launch. This irons out any issues and ensures the entire project doesn’t become a wasted effort.

Track Report and Adjust

You need to know what is being used, why, and what isn’t, after launch and beyond. Doing this means you report against your early goals and make adjustments as required. All of the data you can gather will feed back on how the programme develops over time.

The businesses with effective employee wellness programs are the ones that make sure it’s working at all times and can adapt as things change or the workforce evolves, so it remains relevant and beneficial.

Photo by Ivan S