Employee wellness programs are becoming more and more popular over the coming years and all for good reason. If wellness programs are implemented correctly, they should increase motivation, lower staff turnover, increase physical and mental health and keep employees happy. The main aim of any corporate wellness program is to increase and encourage overall wellness while having FUN.
However, if you are unable to build a fun wellness engagement with staff it will be very hard to carry out a successful corporate program. So how can you ensure a successful wellness program? Here are some tips from our wellness team at Safe Hands.
Ask the team to help create the wellness program
So make sure the corporate wellness program is partly designed by the staff members. You can do this by starting off with a survey and asking employees what they would like to participate in, what they find is a fun way to get fit and healthy, and what they enjoy doing when referring to corporate wellness. By starting a wellness ambassador team it is also very beneficial to get the greatest number of ideas and help lead the other team members to participate. With everyone involved, it will also encourage team building. When a corporate wellness program is fun it will not feel like a chore and people will be jumping to join. Nothing like having fun and getting healthy at the same time. The Safe Hands team conducted a great fitness challenge for BSTG and had a 98% engagement rate and as you can see in the summary video, everyone got involved and had fun!
Start and finish off with a BANG
Start the corporate wellness journey off in the office with a bang. To announce the corporate wellness strategies that will be implemented in a company makes it fun (please don’t just send the plan via email). This will hopefully get the excitement and memento going early. This could be done at a business lunch, kick-off day at the start of the year, at a quarterly company meeting, or even over a webinar but try to ensure that the whole team can make it. Try to add elements of fun into the bang with a team class, a fun quiz, a team-building activity, a corporate fun run, or get a professional to hold a workshop
Have a plan set but try not to overwhelm everyone with too much information…. You still need to leave a little something to leave them guessing what’s to come.
Everyone loves a prize
Praise with rewards. We all love a good challenge and what better way to bring out the competitor side in you than work towards a prize. It is also a wonderful way to motivate teams who might be competing against another team. It doesn’t have to be big, just a movie ticket or massage voucher. just make sure the prize will be something that is fun and rewarding. However, if you do have a larger budget something like a Fitbit or Apple watch is always very well received.
Get a Wellness App
Wellness apps can make a big difference to employee engagement. Having people participate in wellness events and then monitoring performance on leaderboards helps employees track progress, encourages employee participation and motivation. Safe Hands use our own bespoke corporate wellness app for our wellness clients which increases engagement by up to 70%.
Wellness WhatsApp group
By creating a WhatsApp group, it is an easy way to communicate and share any information. As Well as, announce any upcoming events. The main aim is also to encourage and motivate each other in the group. Sharing a sweaty selfie, your favorite recipe, or just telling other team members how well they are doing will make everyone feel like they are in this together and all have the same goals…. GET HEALTHY AND HAVE FUN TOGETHER!
Keep it simple
Keep in mind that most people in a corporate environment still have a job to do. You don’t want anyone to feel that you are creating more work or taking away work time that they will have to find later in their own time. Start small with your programs or challenges. A step or healthy eating challenge (we all have to do these things). Lead up to bigger challenges like 30 x 30 challenges once everyone knows what corporate wellness is about. This will show people that even a small challenge can be fun and encourage everyone to lead up to allowing more time to the Fun corporate wellness program.
Just remember you won’t get 100% engagement but you will learn along the way what your company enjoys taking part in but just remember ENCOURAGE, SUPPORT, MOTIVATE and HAVE FUN and so will everyone else.
If you would like help creating your own employee wellness plans or someone to run this for you, get in touch with our team of wellness professionals at Safe Hands.