What are some best practices for creating and maintaining a team wellness plan?

Creating and maintaining a team wellness plan is essential for promoting a healthy and positive work environment. Please remember that a successful team wellness plan is an ongoing effort that requires commitment, flexibility, and a genuine concern for the well-being of your team members.

Consistency and Direction. Hire a Wellness Director as C-suite, take Wellness seriously, not just as an afterthought as it is "trending".

It is very important to know your team & understand what wellness means to them. For instance, if your team has most people in their 50’s, “Wellness” might mean able to have a good night’s sleep & feeling fresh in the morning, while a team that primarily consists of people in their 20’s or 30’s may feel “Well” if they are physically fit & are able to run a half marathon & a team in their 40’s might feel “well” if their families are financially well looked after. Tailoring the wellness programs as per the perceived notion of “wellness” of the target audience, is a great starting point. The wellness quotient & appetite can be easily determined through surveys & polls.

Before you can get honest answers from your team about their wellness needs, you have to ensure you have a psychologically safe workspace, that your leadership team promotes and practice wellness, and that there are no penalties for being honest about their mental or emotional health. It can help to bring in someone who can help with this process. Surveys and interviews are only valuable if there is safety and trust built between employees and the leadership they are answering to. If you want the benefits of a wellness plan, you need to focus on getting the right data to make it effective.

Before creating a wellness plan - focus on understanding the needs of the employees. Do they *need* a wellness plan, or do they need a more flexible schedule, improved benefit options, better work/life balance (stemming from the organization). A survey is great, only if you're willing to be open to all suggestions from employees about what matters to them - not to the organization.

I think the most realistic goal is understanding that you will never have 100% engagement. Employees don't HAVE to participate in wellness programs - they are at-will. But if you are implementing suggestions from employees, setting goals that are realistic to the expectations of the program are ideal - if a lot of employees wanted mental health resources, integrate MH resources. Meeting the employees where they are provides them with support, guidance, and makes them feel that their needs are important to the organization.

According to my experience the team or the employees must be educated on wellness first & inspired to participate in the activities planned. Most often they are not interested as they do not understand the value of it & consider it as just another initiative of HR. Holding sessions to make them realise that their well-being & wellness is so important to the organisation & how it directly impacts all aspects of their lives, would enable the HR to get a buy in. Once they give their buy in, it is important to understand what are their current wellness requirements. Customising the wellness programs to cater to those needs would eventually lead to collaboration & participation.