6 Things that Employees Expect in a Workplace Wellness Program

Business leaders around the world are now becoming more concerned about the health and wellbeing of their employees. The reason is quite certain. Employees who are healthy and active registered better performance and positively impacted the work environment around them. That is why many organizations consider corporate wellness programs and integrate them into their work culture.

Corporate wellness programs are a health and wellness initiative adopted by organizations for encouraging the employees to embrace an active lifestyle through various health-related activities and proper incentivization. Another contributing factor for the growing popularity of such programs is that it lessens the employee healthcare cost.

However, with much to gain from such programs, many organizations come across lower employee participation.

According to a survey by the Global Wellness Institute, about half of the employees have access to these wellness programs but still, a majority of them stay on the back foot.

What could be the possible reason?

The reasons why the employees might refrain from participating in the wellness program could be many. Even if you organize a robust program there might be a few loopholes hindering the participation rates. These could be irregular program schedules, unclear objectives, unhealthy competition, and uneven incentivization. And who needs to look this up? You, the employers!

You can’t force all your employees to join the program. Still, you can try to fill in the voids in your program by learning what your employees want in it.

Hence, in this blog, I jotted down a few things that employees look forward to in a workplace wellness program.

Let’s start!

6 Things That Employees Want in a Workplace Wellness Program

1. Active Participation of their Managers

This point basically means “practice what you preach”. Whenever there’s a new issue, the employees always look to their higher-ups for guidance and motivation. Usually, in a corporate setup, the flow of ideas and motivation primarily follows a top to bottom approach. And the same must be applied when you introduce a workplace wellness program.

As an employer, you must encourage all the top-level executives to actively participate in the program to set an example for the employees. Ultimately, all they need is just need a little motivation and someone to lead them. Hence, participating along with your employees would really encourage them to embark on the same path for embracing a healthier lifestyle.

2. Better Accessibility to the Program

One of the common issues faced by the employees while participating in wellness programs is accessibility. Nowadays, hardly anyone has much time to visit a gym, wellness center, or take part in other health sessions. The same thing could happen to your employee wellness program as well if you follow the conventional ways.

However, with the advent of cloud computing, accessing many things has become much easier, including workplace wellness initiatives. You can now create and host your own wellness programs using digital apps like Vantage Fit which allows your employees to participate in the program from anywhere and any time.

3. Means to Keep Up a Healthy Competition

An important aspect of a workplace wellness program is to bring out the sportsmanship and leadership qualities within the employees. Both these qualities encourage them to keep up a healthy competition which in fact creates a much better work culture.

However, this aspect might often get hindered if a proper system is not followed while planning wellness activities for employees. This involves accurately tracking their progress in real-time and maintaining transparency by enabling everyone to view their position.

The conventional wellness programs lacked this feature now addressed by cloud-based corporate wellness solutions like Vantage Fit. This highly intuitive app has a built-in leader-board where every participant can see their position and their peers. Hence, encouraging healthy competition with a gamified experience.

Click Here to Learn More About the Features of Vantage Fit

4. Personalized Health Guidance

Nowadays, everyone desires to have a personalized experience whenever they do or avail of something. The same thing applies to your employees having access to your workplace health activities.

Personalizing your employees’ wellness experience by bringing in a health coach or constantly updating them about their health status as they progress would be great. This would help the employees set their own health targets and analyze their achievements for better health.

5. Mental Health Support

Paying attention to employees’ mental health has become the need of the hour. The ever-growing workload is now taking a toll on your employees’ mental health. Here, the problem becomes even grimmer because hardly your employees will ever tell anyone about their issues freely. That is why employees now want their organizations to include the aspect of mental health in the wellness program.

This would allow your employees to open up about the stress they could be facing at work so that you can take proper measures to uplift them from their woes.

6. Incentivization

We, humans, tend to participate in anything when we are getting something in return. In the same way, employees taking part in wellness programs deserve a reward after completing the health challenges. Rewarding your employees for their health achievements is a great way to keep them motivated and to attract others to boost participation rates. The two benefits of incentivizing your employees are

• It encourages them to keep up with their fitness regime until it becomes a habit.

• It forms a meaningful employee reward program by making them healthy at the same time.

Hence, whenever you create a workplace wellness program always remember to make provisions for incentivizing your employees.

Bottomline

Employees are the heart of every organization, and employers must leave no stone unturned in taking care of them. Wellness programs are one way that every organization can adopt to encourage employees to take up a healthy lifestyle.

Also, while creating a workplace wellness program, don’t forget to take your employees’ opinions. For it is them only who’ll benefit the most out of such programs, so try communicating your expectations from the program.

The above points were a few of those expectations that employees generally have. However, if you think that the employees might have some other expectations, we would love to hear them from you in the comments below.