7 Ways To Boost Wellness Program Participation At The Workplace

Workplace wellness goes beyond offering your employees essential benefits like health insurance. For holistic employee well-being, companies have been investing highly in workplace wellness programs. It helps in increasing loyalty, productivity, and retention.

A plethora of research claims that corporate wellness programs have a mutual benefit on both employees and companies. However, one of the primary issues that they struggle with is a successful wellness program participation.

According to the Workplace Health In American Survey results, 17 percent of U.S. companies with 50 or more employees offer health promotion or programs at work. As wellness is becoming popular among millennials, the trend of employee health programs becomes a differentiator to attract high-performing employees looking to work.

But launching a wellness program comes with uncertainty and risks. Low participation rates might make it harder to justify continuing these perks around. But, according to a study by Virgin Pulse, 85 percent of companies say wellness programs support employee engagement, so it's worth going the extra mile to encourage employees to take part.

What are the reasons for non-participation?

According to the Wellness Council Of America, the most significant barriers for non-participation in workplace wellness programs are:

• Insufficient wellness incentives
• Inconvenient location
• Time restrictions
• Lack of interest or motivation
• Lack of communication
• Personal health benefits
• Unsupportive company culture
• Trust and privacy concerns

Top 7 Ways To Motivate Wellness Program Participation

1. Seek The Help Of Wellness Professionals

Your role as an HR manager can be demanding when you need to take care of each employee. So it's understandable that you may have concerns about finding the time to tool a comprehensive employee wellness strategy. So it would be best if you tried exploring ways for maximizing your wellness success. Seek help by appointing someone as the health coach or a trained wellness coordinator.

This wellness expert helps you in devising the right wellness strategies. Starting from advertising the program to boosting employee engagement, your health coach provides all the essential aspects of a holistic workplace program participation.

2. Design Employee-friendly Wellness Programs

The most obvious way to get employees to participate is by offering programs of what they like. Have a wellness committee and carry out a regular survey or a poll to determine your employees' responses about the wellness programs.

You'll be surprised to learn that knowing your employees' likes and dislikes can boost participation. It will also elevate employee loyalty, as it marks your company's positive outlook, that cares for employees.

3. Offer Wellness Incentives

According to a brief by the HealthCare Dive, nearly 90% of employers offer wellness incentives to an employee for wellness program participation. Offering financially-focused rewards include bonuses, paid leave, or health premium rebates. You can also opt for fitness incentives like gym memberships or goodies.

A Forbes article also reported that 62% of respondents would gain interests in wellness programs when incentives like wearable fitness trackers were provided.

4. Make The Process Simple

Your employees would love to burn those extra calories provided they don't o have to burn a ton of brain calories trying to understand how their program works and what they need to do to take part. Try to keep the process and activities as simple as possible.

A popular trend of offering Telemedicine or corporate health check-ups comes handy in such cases. Research from NRC Health shows that 51% of consumers believe that convenient access is the single-most-important factor driving their health care decisions.

5. Never Hesitate To Communicate

Communication is one of the issues highlighted by employees for non-participation in wellness programs. A failed approach to marketing the benefits of employee well-being can affect setting up such programs.

You can also use digital mediums and tools to keep them updated. Boosting them with wellness incentives to reach a milestone, keep your employees in the loop, and be motivated.

You can check out Vantage Fit, advanced and customizable health, and wellness mobile app, to rejuvenate employees' overall wellness.

6. Give Them Choices

Different employees will naturally have a wide variety of interests. A similar concept applies when we raise the topic of deciding wellness goals. One way to boost wellness programs' participation is to offer various plans that align well with your staff's personal goals and interests.

For that, you must have a holistic approach to wellness. Try not to focus only on physical or mental health, but offer programs to help your employees with financial wellness, anxiety, and stress management.

7. Support From Top Down

The final element for maximizing wellness program participation is to have supportive leadership. It requires both art and science. Many wellness professionals have suggested that senior leadership support is an essential aspect of fair wellness program participation.

This article is written by Rangana Atreya, a Content Marketer at Vantage Circle. Having a creative mind with a spiritful life, she takes inspiration from travelling and learning languages. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com