When people are healthy, they are happy. And when they are happy they work more productively and efficiently. Many people that are stressed out with work often cite that there is not enough work-life balance. When your company focuses on ways to keep your employee healthy, then they are less likely to feel burned out and do have a more positive outlook on their job.
Also, employees want to feel like they are cared for by their employer. When you implement corporate wellness programs, they are more likely to feel that you care about them as people and don’t just look at them as cogs in the wheel.
But, sometimes these wellness programs don’t work out as planned. Usually because many mistakes were made along the way. If you want healthy employees then avoid these common wellness initiative program mistakes.
1 – Don’t be the food police
It’s one thing to want to make sure that your employees are doing their part to stay healthy and quite another to put too much pressure on them to do so. Give them incentives that they can strive for, but don’t be the one that is trying to control all of their diet decisions.
The road to wellness is not a straight one and there are going to be times when they fall back into bad habits. Be there to support them to get back on track but don’t be the one that tells them what they can and cannot eat. Your job is to give them guidelines and the tools to help them achieve their goals.
In fact, lead by example by eating healthy snacks at work and encourage them to find ones that they like as well.
2 – Make the program too complicated
The whole idea is for your program to be accessible for everybody. This means that when you create an initiative that is too complicated to follow it is going to have a very low success rate.
There is a fine line between too simple to be effective and simple enough for people to stick with it and still get results. It can be difficult to find the right balance but it is essential. Keep in mind that people are busy and need to be able to incorporate the program into their busy lives.
3 – You don’t use the honor system
Results speak for themselves so if your employee says that they are doing the routine and it shows then there really is no need for them to furnish proof. If you do require verification for every activity then this is not going to go well for some of your employees.
Though, some might like to have that kind of accountability, others may feel like they are being treated like children and push back against the program. With an honor system, there may be people who lie about the activities. But, those people will also not hit their goals and won’t get the wellness points based on weigh ins or lower cholesterol or whatever the criteria is for the points.