Are you looking for a foolproof health promotion program for your organization? Well, there are several to choose from but what should you look for in one such program.
The right wellness and health improvement program will increase the productivity of your employees, reduce absenteeism and healthcare costs, and retain employees for longer durations. However, a wrong program will not only not give you the desired results but also consume a lot of your money and time.
There are several attributes that you as an employer must keep in mind before choosing a health promotion programs for your workplace.
Here is a list of these factors for your reference:
- Behavior improvement:
While once-a-week exercise, yoga, or any other fitness session is great to achieve short-term health improvement results and improve engagement, you must find a program that makes an impact on your employees’ health behaviors.
An effective wellness program will focus on influencing your employees to adopt healthy behaviors, which in turn will drastically affect their productivity and efficiency for a long duration.
- Ask for valid portfolio:
Before you choose a wellness program from any vendor, you must ask for a solid portfolio. Few of them won’t make the cut. Ask for at least 10 or more references from the vendor you are considering and reach them out personally to obtain trustworthy information.
Once you reach out to the vendor’s references, you must ask questions about the good and bad aspects of the vendor’s services and the results they were able to achieve using them. This is a good practice to follow as it gives more accurate information about the vendor’s health programs than any blog, testimonial, or online review.
- Look for numbers, not for words:
The best way to know if any program works or not is to evaluate its success statistically. A vendor that presents you with data-based information, will definitely offer better services than a vendor who is just words.
Research and look for published evidence like scientific journals or any statistical report that clearly tells about the achievement of a wellness program.
- Look for technology:
Most effective workplace health promotion programs will definitely be leveraging some latest and greatest technologies. A simple application that helps you schedule health workshops and track your employees’ performance is something that almost every program will offer.
You want something that gives you more. Look for an application that includes the benefits of technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning for intriguing features. These technologies will help you inspect and evaluate the performance of each employee and help you come up with specific programs to implement for better outcomes and results.
- Level of interaction:
While you must look for vendors that offer you technology-powered services, your ideal vendor should also interact with you and your employees to help your organization reach its fitness and health goals.
Human interaction is essential when it comes to fitness and exercise sessions. Firstly, this helps in ensuring that the employees are following all the steps in the way they are meant to be. Secondly, this interaction boosts the morale of employees and keeps them motivated towards their health goals.
Hence, your ideal health and wellness promotion program vendor must participate with the wellness committee and should act as a human partner to reach and interact with every employee.
- Offers customization:
For every company, the goals associated with wellness programs are surely different. While one organization may want to use these programs to improve employee productivity, others may want to leverage them to boost the morale of their workforce.
Based on the main goal of the organization, each wellness and health program will have distinct regimes, features, and activities. Also, from time to time these goals can change as the company follows through with a program.
Hence, wellness programs must be flexible enough to adapt based on the main objective of the company and must offer a high level of customization. This will help you create your specific program including activities and campaigns that suits your needs to help you overcome the challenges you are facing.
- Must improve work culture:
While adopting healthy habits is easy, maintaining them for a long-duration is difficult. Hence, the health program you choose should have the ability to infuse healthy habits in your employees and help you create a culture that supports a healthy lifestyle.
This improved work culture will also help your company in a long-haul by retaining employees and attracting good talent.
CONCLUSION:
Planning a wellness and health program can be a bid investment for any company. It is hence important for companies to choose their wellness program carefully to ensure that they get their required outcomes. By keeping these points in mind, any company can choose their ideal program and use it effectively for multiple benefits.
Author Bio
Nathan Figg is the Founder and CEO of Woliba a Software as a Service company in the wellness and engagement space. Woliba helps organizations consolidate their HR software tools into one comprehensive platform to enhance company culture, engagement, morale, and workplace wellbeing. With built-in automation and AI, Woliba helps organizations easily manage wellbeing, engagement, employee rewards and recognition initiatives in one mobile-friendly platform