How to Launch a Wellbeing Program
Employee wellbeing, employee happiness, employee engagement, employee experience, employee satisfaction… these are the terms often used interchangeably. While they are related, they don’t mean the same things, and the strategies around how to improve them can be significantly different.
So, what’s the difference?
When talking about employee wellbeing, think about it as the way employees’ duties, expectations, stress levels and working environments affect their overall health and happiness.
9 Steps to Launch and Manage a Successful Employee Wellbeing Program
Let’s take a look into the crucial steps for implementing and maintaining your employee wellbeing program.
1. Get executives’ buy-in and support
Getting executive buy-in is the first step to getting started with your employee wellbeing strategy. Whenever there is change happening, it’s important to maintain executives’ buy-in and support over time. More than ever before, leaders need to act as role models to the entire company.
They need to understand the importance of their role in situations such as this crisis. Leaders are the ones from whom employees expect support, they expect them to be authentic and approachable. Communication that emphasizes that leadership cares about employees’ wellbeing can go a long way in encouraging employee engagement and participation in wellbeing programs.
2. Send a company-wide wellbeing survey
In order to build the best program, you first need to understand your employees’ fears, needs, wants, problems and concerns. Only then you can really make sure that your program will be efficient, and that it will deliver the expected results.
3. Create a wellbeing program based on your employees’ feedback
Use employee feedback captured in your surveys to better plan for your wellbeing program. Based on the insights collected, you can make a better decision on what your program should contain.
For example, if you find that your employees feel disconnected due to social distancing, the social component of their wellbeing may be hurt. If true, one component of your wellbeing program should be to improve workplace communication and implement digital solutions that can help your employees stay connected with their peers and managers.
4. Define the goals
As you will see later in this article, there are numerous benefits of investing in employee wellbeing. Based on the challenges your organization is facing, some of your goals may be:
To increase staff satisfaction
To increase staff morale
To improve staff retention
To increase productivity
To reduce absenteeism
To foster better relationships between staff and management
To increase open communications
5. Launch your wellbeing program and make the company-wide announcement
This is a crucial step!
The effectiveness of your new program will greatly depend on your ability to spread the word across your entire organization and reach every employee with the news. As mentioned earlier, organizations need to ensure the right flow of information by consolidating different communication channels into a central communications platform.
6. Promote your wellbeing program and communicate its benefits to build internal awareness
If employee wellness programs are built to achieve desired outcomes, effective internal communication to drive employee participation is a must. Employees need to understand the benefits of wellbeing for both them personally as well as the organization as a whole. Only then you can align your workplace to work towards the same wellbeing goals that you have previously identified.
7. Get your managers on board
Therefore, managers must see the connection between employee wellbeing and the company success, and they have to be enthusiastic about supporting employee wellbeing. But employers also need to make sure that managers get proper training and have an easy access to all the wellbeing materials they need such as guidelines and toolkits.
8. Continuously encourage employees to participate and solicit their ideas
Employers should continuously encourage their employees to participate in the wellbeing programs and make suggestions for improvements. This approach helps employees better understand their role in creating a culture of wellbeing.
Those employees who are passionate about creating happier, healthier, and more resilient work environments can also help you spread the word and even help you launch the program in new office locations. These people, however, should be recognized in front of your entire organization to also encourage others to join the program with their share of voice.
References:
https://haiilo.com/blog/employee-wellbeing-definition-importance-best-practice/