If you’ve ever tried to build a workplace wellness program, you know it can be a long, frustrating process. It involves wooing senior leadership, creating programming that gets employees excited, and sending what feels like a million communications.
Unfortunately, many of these programs fall flat despite all their efforts. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why.
Lack of Management Support
Wellness programs are a great way for companies to help employees make better health choices and stay healthier. They can also reduce the costs associated with insurance premiums and workers’ compensation.
In addition, wellness programs can create more productive employees and help build a healthier, happier workplace culture. However, they must be implemented correctly and ingrained into the company’s culture.
This means managers must take the time to understand their employees’ underlying wellness challenges and offer solutions that work for them. It also means recognizing that wellness is not a stand-alone issue, and employees have many different needs, struggles, and perspectives.
Lack of Communication
A lack of communication is one of the most common reasons why wellness programs fail. This is especially true when employees have a hard time interpreting or understanding the information that they receive from their managers.
A workplace wellness program needs a multipronged approach to communicate with its target audience. That involves an email campaign, digital fliers, and even in-person meetings.
This is important because wellness marketing has a big impact on employee behavior. Without it, people won’t take action towards their wellness goals.
It’s also important to have a team of individuals who are well-versed in communicating the goals of the wellness program and how it will help them achieve them. This will make it much easier to get the message across. This will also increase participation and create a more successful wellness program.
Lack of Motivation
There are many reasons why wellness programs fail, but one of the most common is a lack of motivation. The idea of a wellness program is to help employees adopt healthy behaviors, such as eating right and getting regular exercise.
Those behaviors can lead to lower medical spending, better job performance, and improved clinical outcomes. In a University of Illinois study, workers who took part in a wellness program saw their health risks improve six weeks after starting the program.
A successful workplace wellness program is based on a combination of incentives and targeted education that help employees adopt healthier behaviors. It helps them reduce their risk for chronic disease, which in turn lowers their health insurance costs and healthcare expenditures.
Lack of Incentives
One of the biggest reasons that wellness programs fail is a lack of incentives. If employees aren’t able to find ways to earn cash prizes, rewards or bonuses for completing wellness challenges, they’re not going to be engaged with the program.
Incentives should be based on employee health outcomes and not just on financial benefits or other non-health goals. For example, if someone has been trying to quit smoking for years and has only achieved small success, an incentive of $50 or $100 won’t likely be enough to encourage them to break that habit.
Incentives can be used to promote a healthier work environment and save companies money in the long run. But they also need to be carefully weighed against other costs, such as lost productivity and employee turnover.
Lack of Technology
Technology is an essential part of any workplace wellness program. It can help employees track their progress on wellness activities, communicate with other participants and receive rewards for healthy behaviors.
A lack of technology is one of the reasons that wellness programs fail to get high participation rates. With busy schedules, long work hours and family obligations, employees don’t have the time to devote to their health.
However, the right corporate wellness technology can help you overcome these barriers and make your wellness program more effective. These technologies can help you achieve your goals, improve employee engagement and increase retention. They can also provide you with data that will help you identify the best ways to streamline your program and get better results. It will also give you a clearer picture of your workforce and their needs.