How can you improve employee participation in your wellness program?

While an employee needs assessment is a great start and can highlight key focus areas unique to your company, it's even more important to use this information to create a strong business case for the investment of time, energy, and resources it will take to implement an effective plan. This business case is essential to ensure senior leaders are on board and understand the financial and operational impacts, outcomes, and benefits. Many programs end up being ineffective because this senior leadership engagement is neglected. This is particularly true when it comes to senior leaders modelling daily actions that align with the goals of the wellbeing program.

It goes (almost) without saying that well-being initiatives have been among the greatest engagement drivers companies can utilize. Always make sure all your well-being communications emphasize work-life balance and how this is seamlessly connected to the company's EVP and corporate mission. Bring all well-being initiatives to life and consistently encourage compliance.

Encouraging them to lead by example. No one can trust or support a wellness initiative if leaders are not involved and if they don’t serve as role models Would you trust in a leader who is not in a good shape, not able to manage stress or not keep life balance?

This is by far the most important aspect of any workplace wellness program, yet one that is often neglected by well meaning HR and wellness teams. Engagement of senior leaders goes far beyond having them show up at events. The most crucial change is for leaders to consciously choose daily actions that improve employee wellbeing and workplace culture. All the wellness initiatives in the world will not make up for actions by leaders that decrease employee engagement and wellbeing. This is why many companies can claim to have a great "wellness" program, yet still show high levels of stress, burnout, and turnover with low employee engagement. Simple Tip: Focus less on providing wellness features. Put more on actions that improve wellbeing.

Understanding the difference between wellness and wellbeing is essential to providing programs that work for employees and the business. Wellness can be thought of as the programs and actions we take in the quest to improve wellbeing (and performance). It's common for companies to provide a lot of wellness amenities without actually measuring whether wellbeing is improved. At the fundamental level, humans want to feel heard, seen, valued, and respected in the workplace while working on engaging and challenging projects. Leaders have the ability to provide this for their teams regardless of traditional "wellness" amenities. Many companies and HR teams have lost sight of this leadership impact in the quest to add more wellness tools.