How to Design and Launch a Successful Wellbeing Program

In this episode we will look at the intricacies of designing and launching a successful wellbeing program at work. I’ll share insights, practical tips, and proven strategies to help you create a program that enhances physical, mental, and emotional wellness in your organization. This episode will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to make a positive impact in your organization by saving cost and increasing productivity through wellness programs. Tune in and discover the key elements to design and launch a successful wellbeing program.

🎙️💼 Designing and launching a wellbeing program at work takes effort, but it's truly rewarding for employees and the organization as a whole. In this episode, we'll take a look at these key 🔑 steps:

1️⃣ Understand the needs of your employees
2️⃣ Identify the goals of the program
3️⃣ Get leadership buy-in
4️⃣ Promote the program among your employees
5️⃣ Encourage employees to participate

Tune in and discover the key elements to design and launch a successful wellbeing program.

#corporatewellness #wellnessatwork #employeewellness #wellbeing #wellness #wellnessconsultant #professionalspeaker

🌟 🌟 🌟 If you liked this episode and would like to learn more about wellness training and workshops offered by 9 to 5 Wellness, email us at info@aeshathair.com. You can learn more about our programs at: https://toneandstrengthen.com/workshops-trainings/. 🌟 🌟 🌟

My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!

🌟 🌟 🌟 You can learn more about ME- the host at https://www.aeshatahir.com

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Transcript

 Hello and welcome to today's episode of 9 to 5 wellness.  Today, I want to talk about well being programs. One of the questions that keeps coming up in my LinkedIn DMs is, how do you design and launch an effective employee wellness program? So I figured I'll address that on our podcast today.  I want to start with that.

Implementing a wellness program is a great way to help employees stay healthy and manage their well being. We talked about this in our last two episodes as well, episode number six and episode number seven. So I'd like to encourage you to go back and listen to those episodes as well if you want to learn more about wellness programs. 

Now. Talking about launching and designing a wellness program, I do want to tell you that when you're trying to launch a successful workplace wellness program, it's not easy because it takes time.  money and commitment from the whole team and upper management. So it's important to recognize and approach wellness programs as a business strategy.

Among the excitement of choosing activities, incentives, and designing facilities, it is easy to like lose sight of the fact that a wellness program,  is a business strategy after all. As a business strategy, the program should align with company's core values, employee's values. and business needs first.

Then and only then you can get into the designing, choosing the committee members, and activities part. Because it is a significant cost and when you are investing significant amount of money, you want to make sure that your business strategy for the wellness program Aligns with your employees and company's values.

I want to give you an example here. One of my client companies has core values of collaboration, inclusion, and community. The employees value connection and collaboration, and they prioritize their time with family, toO. 

So given that this company's values of collaboration, inclusion.  And community, and the employees valuing time with family, we ended up implementing, a program which included the elements of incentive, group fitness with access to family members, group outings, which included family participation, and group coaching platforms around nutrition and posture, which was accessible to their families too.

So it covered All of those bases and have brought our client a 50 percent improvement in employee engagement and retention.  This program worked because it was in alignment with the company's values and the employee's values.

So this is the way. that I consult companies and , we create programs from ground up.  When I consult companies on well being solutions, wellness programs, we dissect the process into steps. And here's how to launch an effective program in five steps that I have found is very practical  for workplaces.

Step one,  understanding the needs of your employees.  Creating a successful employee wellness program means that we need to understand why we are creating wellness benefits in the first place.  This step is necessary to understand the concerns and complaints of your employees. 

What are the kind of programs they want? What do they want to prioritize in terms of their well being? What obstacles are they facing? Are they bringing other teammates along with them? So,  We have to consider all of these questions. 

 When we understand all of these  elements and aspects, then we can actually create  a wellness program that caters to that  workplace's employees.  Here's an example. If a wellness program is created for a team that doesn't have regular lunch hour,  then offering a lunch and learn program will not work for them. 

Getting the employees feedback as to what they would like to see included is the best way to understand what kind of wellness program should be offered.  The best way to do that is by gathering data.  You can create a survey that can include various relevant questions related to workplace culture.  You will want to share it with the employees throughout the organization to understand your employees better and implement a well being program that caters to the needs of your employees. 

Now, this data infrastructure will help you start building workplace well being strategies.  These strategies  cannot be based on intuition  because  then they don't stick. If you want your wellness program to stick, they have to be based on actual facts and needs.  You know, the alternative approach tends to be blanket strategies, which won't work for everyone.

 I have an example for you.  I was working with a company and they were trying to get their team members to collaborate better. And they also wanted them to come into the office more often. 

Thought that they would create a blanket strategy for team collaboration to get everyone back together in the same room,  headquarters, because they believe that that's the only way to get teammates to collaborate,  but that strategy didn't work because it wasn't inclusive. So you want to create a wellness program that is inclusive of all of your employees. 

Now, once you have your employee's survey results  and you have a better sense of the employee dynamics in your organization, then you can proceed with relevant wellness initiatives. That could address the pain points you uncovered through the survey.  The goal is to have a holistic wellness program that targets all aspects of employee well being.

Not just the physical, of course physical is part of it, but also mental, social.  It should have room to discover purpose of employees. It should include leadership skills. It should also include financial education for financial wellbeing.   Now, the second step is to identify the goals of the program. Once you have the survey results,  the insights provided by it will help you get a better idea about the needs of the team.  It will help you understand the concerns and issues faced in the workplace by the employees. You can define the objectives of the program. 

Some of the goals of an employee well being program which I have developed for organizations include  increasing employee satisfaction, improving retention of employees, increasing work productivity,  Reducing absenteeism, reducing healthcare cost, developing open communication among employees.  So, you can choose from any of these goals or create your own with the help of the employee survey. 

Step number three is to get the leadership involved.  Now, this step is very important. Don't skip it.  A wellness program that exists in name only and does not have the leadership buy in and support is not going to be set up for success.  So if you are an employee attempting to design a wellness program, get the upper management excited about this project. 

Their involvement plays a huge role in whether your program gets off the ground and it also determines how much funding you get.  Now  plays a huge part in also how visible your program is going to be, because think about it. If the C suite leaders are participating in the program. Your program will have more engagement, so it's very important to get the leadership involved  and to get them to be participating, get them excited about the program. 

Now that takes us to step number four,  promote the program among your employees.  Now that you have all the major elements in place, you know exactly what your wellness program should look like based on the employee feedback and the C suite leadership support. Now you want to start introducing the program to employees and clearly communicate its benefits to them.

Make sure that they understand why it's important and how it will benefit them.   That would help you set clear expectations for participation in the program.  Remember to highlight how it will help in their well being.  Some of the examples are, like, they could get days off, they could get bonuses. They could get, , reduced costs on their health insurance bill. 

So as a wellness program organizer, you need to be able to provide employees with a clear roadmap of how they can get started on the path towards better health and well being. What does the participation look like? And what kind of incentives are being offered

final step and the fifth step in this process is encouraging employees to participate  and provide suggestions for improvement  once you have your program up and running. You still have work to do. It's not like,  you created the program and now everybody knows about it and it can just roll on its own.

That's not how it works. You still have to put the work in. You will need to encourage the employees to participate in the well being programs. Make sure that you are Marketing it to the employees and encourage the employees to provide you feedback  on the program that you have created.  Because it's important to take into consideration the feedback that is being provided and incorporate that feedback into the program to promote improvement that cater to the needs of the team.

Now this approach will give you a better understanding of your role in fostering a culture of well being. Wellness programs are a great way to attract and retain people. talented employees in the long run, since they will be less likely to leave if they feel their needs are being met. So since now you're understanding your employee's needs better.

It makes your workplace so much more attractive to the top talent.  They will stay longer  because their needs are being met.  Now,  these steps that I have laid out for you, they are just a road map. Think of this plan as a road map with room for detours.  Because it's important to have a design plan in place, but leaving space for new and exciting ideas that may come up along the way is also important. 

Having a framework that covers all these important aspects of  program design  can ensure that you have a comprehensive approach, of course, but it's equally important to remain flexible. and allow for unexpected opportunities that will pop up because of employee feedback or interest in certain activities. 

Now, here is my wisdom for anyone who's trying to create a wellness program at work.  Embrace the journey and be open to exploring new paths that lead to great success in wellness programs. 

If you or your team is looking to start a wellness program at your organization,  And you need help along the way, check out my website, 9to5wellness. com, on how I can help you implement a program that will increase your company's bottom line, reduce absenteeism, increase work productivity, and retention of employees. 

Thank you so much for listening today.