'Check yo'self before yo wreck yo'self' - Ice Cube
If you’re anything like me, and have a genuine interest in your employee’s wellbeing (which seeing as you’re here, I’m guessing you do!). You've probably considered or at least thought about implementing a health and wellness program in your workplace. But the big question is - will it work? Or more importantly, do we really need it?
Before you start ringing different vendors and drawing up a business case, Here is a list of questions (predictors) that can be used to help companies make the right choice on whether or not to start a wellness program.
1. Why do you want to start a wellness program?
In our experience, about 85% of the time employers say that the reason they are wanting to do wellness is to improve the health of their employees and to reduce employee-related expenses. The other 15% of the time employers want to do wellness because they feel it is the right thing to do for their employees. They want their worksite to be an enjoyable and rewarding place to work where the employees are healthy, happy, and productive.
Both of these are valid reasons to do wellness, but they will require a different type of wellness program. If the goal is to improve employee health and reduce employee related expenses then the program must be focused on helping employees adopt and maintain healthy behaviors.
These types of programs require a comprehensive approach to helping employees have healthy lifestyles. If the goal is just to foster a an enjoyable and rewarding work environment then the wellness program may not need to be so focused on behavior. It could be focused more on having fun.
2. How will you know if your wellness efforts are successful?
There is another way to ask this question. If you start a wellness program today, how would your worksite be different three years from now? What would success look like? How do you plan to quantify that success? What measures will you use? Before you start a wellness program sit down with your management team and answered these questions. If you’re having a hard time answering them perhaps your organization is not ready for a wellness program.
If you can answer them, use your answers to help you select a wellness vendor that can provide you data on how your program is improving employee health behaviors, lowering health risks, and reducing employee related expenses. Remember, to successfully measure the impact of your wellness program you need to gather the right data at the beginning and across time.
There are a number of performance benchmarks used by many organizations as a measure of program success. They refer to it before they begin a wellness program. They include:
Year 1. At the end of year one, program participation will exceed 50% of all eligible participants.
Year 2. At the end of year two, program participants will demonstrate a minimum improvement in health behaviors or health risks of no less than 7% For example, at the end of year two, program participants will be 7% more physically active than when they started the program.
Year 3. At the end of year three, program participants will have fewer medical expenditures than non-participants. The savings will total at least 150% of the cost to deliver the program.
3. What is the nature of your workforce?
A wellness program for the employees of a single location will look and feel very different from wellness program for employees spread out over multiple locations, time zones, and languages. Geographic location is just one thing to consider when starting a wellness program. The type of work you perform is also important to consider.
4. Do you want to go it alone or use professionals?
Senior leaders can also decide whether or not your organization will start a wellness program internally with your own employees or bring in a wellness vendor. This is about the age-old question:should you build it or should you buy it? There are pros and cons of going it alone.
Go It Alone
Pros:
- Get to use your own staff.
- Don’t have to hire a vendor.
- Many worksites have someone who would like to help with wellness.
- Get complete control over every aspect of the program.
Cons:
- Most often staff will be asked to do wellness in addition to their regular job. Without dedicated support, the program will fail.
- Onsite staff will be expected to be behaviour change experts. Staff will need training and certifications.
- Wellness vendors know what it takes to have a successful program; onsite staffing will have to learn by trial and error.
- Are responsible for all aspects of the program including building a web platform.
- Wellness programs run by internal company staff have low participation rates and struggle to keep the program going long-term.
- Hiring a vendor may be cheaper than building your own program because you’ll have to build it from scratch.
Well?
Still hungry? Want to dig a little deeper and see if your workplace is suitable for a wellness program? Click Here or below to download the ultimate checklist for evaluating your workplace for a wellness program
