How can you benefit from employee wellbeing programs?

If I see it as an initiative that not only helps me, my team, my company and even my family I would like to participate and be a champion of employee wellbeing. If I take Mindfulness as the area, if company focuses on how to be mindful holistically (Physical, mental, financial) , I would love to participate and help others too.

It’s a deep dive into your own self and developing self-awareness, understanding their own stressors and learning how to navigate their challenges effectively. These programs not just improve your work-life but also offer insight into your behaviour to focus on your overall well-being. Learning to take ownership of your health, developing problem-solving skills, & boosting self-esteem are just some of the ways employee well-being programs help. Through our well-being programs at Re:Set, we understood that employee well-being is about more than just how a team feels — it impacts their performance at work, morale, absenteeism rates, & even attrition rates. Our solutions ensure they engaged, show up happier, thereby producing better outcomes.

The pandemic taught us a lot about Health and Wellness and made employee well-being a business priority. Now, employers must focus on employee health and wellness with empathy, making resources available for employee support. Employers can provide focus, access and education to employees' well-being by creating a culture of belonging, which yields a positive employee experience.

Employee well being programs are not a HR intervention but a business need. Employee wellbeing is a multi faceted issue and must be managed as such. From physical, emotional, financial and family/community. Each impact employees in different ways. Employee well being programs are designed to ensure that an employee gets taken care of holistically. They ensure employees have tools, education and ways to stay productive, engage and can handle all the things life throws at them. 1/2 employees globally suffered from emotional health during COVID and are constantly being bombarded with new things. We have to ensure that they are looked after and a holistic wellbeing strategy is a starting point

Ask anyone whether they would like an employee wellbeing program they will say "Yes." Ask someone if they've actually taken advantage of a wellbeing program, are they likely to say "No."? So is the disconnect here about engagement? So, some acutal examples of how people are using the program ( anonymised) some push notifications and active reminders from the team behind the Employee Wellbeing program are useful. Before actively engaging with the program, someone is more likely to consider it if they percieve it to be commonly used without stigma, a high quality offering that going to solve a need or problem. Employees won't wish for a wellbeing program to be taken away but it will be seen as a disposable cost if it is not used.

You can't win if you don't play. Employee wellbeing programs positively impact those who participate. Your life is a complex combination of multiple motivations. To maximize the benefit, explore multiple facets of employee well-being. This will help you on the journey to become a complete person.

Providing ongoing information to encourage healthy behaviors around sleep, stress, nutrition, and activity encourages small, healthy steps that are easy to take, maintain, and track to help improve brand identity, employee loyalty and job satisfaction.

In my experience, many employees choose not to participate in wellbeing programs until a concern has already surfaced and impacted their life. So why not be proactive and start participating in wellbeing programs when you’re in a “good” place, whether it be physical, mental or emotional… this way, you can utilize the well-being program to take your “good” to “great”. Additionally, you can be a leader and mentor to others that are working hard and striving to be where you are today. A Proactive and preventative approach only makes it that much easier down the road, will help you keep money in your pocket with insurance OOP costs (both tangible and intangible), and will take productivity to the next level. There’s something for everyone

Feedback and insight go a long way - but taking action and ownership is key. Employer wellness programs are generally led by very small teams, most of which have additional responsibilities. Find out ways to volunteer and assist with initiatives you'd like to see materialize in the workplace.

Fostering employees’ physical, emotional, and intellectual space to thrive is foundational. The best way to accomplish this is through ongoing engagement and education. Focus on well-being in quarterly Pulse Surveys. I do not recommend waiting until an annual survey to get this feedback. Employee sentiment, workload, and work-life balance change throughout the year. Educate and provide resources on benefit coverage offerings beyond onboarding and enrollment. Many US insurance plans offer massages, acupuncture, nutritionists, etc., and fitness or wellness apps that employees may not realize are available.

1) Employee well-being should be for all and not for few favourites. 2) There should be genuine incharge (1 for 10) who should be made responsible to check well-being of these staff members. 3) When any of the staff member leaves the company, he/she must be invited to join specific event meant for them as this kind gesture will impact present staff, positively. Clear off any grudges of past with ex-employees and let fresh perspective make the environment happy. 4) Counsellors (or Psychologists) should be genuine and not bias as they are capable of improving /deteriorating staff members' mental health. 5) There is a lot of difference between Pretending to help and genuine help, hence choosing right staff/mental therapists is important.

Healthy fitness challenges are a fun and effective way to engage a diverse employee population. There are various challenges through apps and gamification to help get your organization competing, such as increasing activity, improving nutrition, and improving all-around health. By improving networking within the company and adding healthy competition, you can challenge and educate employees about their health and wellness while uniting individuals and teams around a common goal. I've done this with employees and followed the challenge with a celebration recognizing individuals and teams, which was fun and appreciated by employees.

At the wellbeing retreat that I provide, I teach the 8 dimensions of wellness. I raise awareness on the importance of both mental and physical health and we explore ideas on how we can achieve them and what works for us.

“S.M.A.R.T” goals should apply to wellness as well. One needs to be able to measure if they’re making progress from where they begin to where they want to be. If the end goal seems too big or far away, break it down into smaller, attainable, short term goals that allow you to get some quick “wins” on the board, therefore motivating you to stay focused on the prize. Lastly, feedback from others is helpful as a “perspective check” on your progress, but in no way should define your progress on its own.

Taking a proactive approach, rather than a reactive approach to your health is really important. Reactive approaches wait for a problem to develop before we do something about it. A proactive approach allows us to assess how functional we are, rather than a focus on how dysfunctional we are. This stacks the deck in your favour to not develop the common problems we see as part of modern day living. Unfortunately by the time symptoms develop a condition may be quite advanced and are harder to correct.

In this article all of these suggestions focus on the individual to make all the changes and support wellbeing. It is important an individual implements their own changes but we also know that a lot of the initiatives that really support wellness are organisational and systemic. Team and Role Redesign for appropriate work loads, meaningful work, valued and funded development, balanced social interaction, and the ability to have mastery, purpose and autonomy are critical. These all require an organisational view to integrate real psych social safety, resilience and wellness.

Really the truth is that organisations are not responsible for improving wellbeing. But they ARE responsible for not damaging it. Lunchtime Pilates and mindfulness app subscriptions are fine, but your primary focus should be to ensure people are not overloaded.

While there is lot of rhetoric on the importance of wellbeing at work some companies are slow to take this seriously. More work needs to be done in raising awareness and encouraging employers to make employee wellbeing a priority.