Employee well-being and wellness programs are more than just trendy buzzwords. In fact, many employers are integrating wellness into their culture and seeing great results. No matter the size of your budget, wellness programs are possible for all businesses—big and small.
The first step is developing a strong employee benefits package with a focus on employee well-being. However, most employers just stop here. They offer wellness benefits, mention them to new hires, hang posters, and that’s about it. Then, they wonder why these options are not being used.
Recently, LifeWorks conducted a survey and identified the real reasons employees don’t take full advantage of their wellness benefits. When benefits go unused, it’s especially damaging to small businesses. After all, you pay for the benefits and you want to see them make a difference in performance.
Let’s take a look at why employees aren’t using your benefits and how to boost utilization:
They Aren’t Aware
It’s not enough to distribute wallet cards during the onboarding process and hang signage in the breakroom to promote important wellness benefits. These traditional methods didn’t work for ages, and they don’t work now.
In fact, the LifeWorks survey found that 17% of employers say employees are unaware of their wellness benefits. This is the top reason for underutilization. The solution? Promote your wellness offerings in a fun and engaging way.
As the founder and in-house perfumer of Pairfum, a perfume company, Huib Maat knew that merely offering free gym memberships wasn’t enough.
“We wanted to promote this offering by organizing competitions,” he said. “This momentum has carried forward, and we still organize annual competitions. This succeeds because our staff enjoys spending time together.”
Like Maat, tailor a promotional strategy around benefits and include engaging tactics like games and competitions.
Ryan Peck, president of Care Ultima, an employee discount program, uses real stories to show employees the true value they can receive from wellness benefits.
“There’s nothing more inspiring than to see someone succeed,” he said. “If an employee sees one of their co-workers losing weight on an assisted ‘wellness benefit’ weight loss platform, they are going to jump on. We would constantly record testimonials from real users, and send them out to everyone once a week.”
Not only do testimonials teach employees about what your employee benefits package has to offer, but also they inspire employees to take action.
They Don’t Know How to Use Them
According to the survey, 16% of employers say employees don’t know how to use wellness benefits. This is alarming, especially if your employees are trying to address important life matters.
Employees shouldn’t feel lost when they’re trying to understand and use their employee benefits package. As the director of global benefits at Cisco, an IT and networking company, Karen Wiens strives to empower her employees with as much direction as possible.
“We offer a variety of wellness programs and benefits that address many facets of employee well-being,” she said. “For example, our financial health program includes webinars on a variety of topics like managing 401ks. We are also planning on offering on-site financial counseling to give our staff face-to-face interaction with financial planners.”
At Cisco, they bring education directly to the entire organization. This way, employees know exactly where to access resources like webinars, how to get the most out of their financial health program, and who to talk to about using these benefits.
As the CEO of MaidPro, a residential cleaning franchise, Mark Kushinsky adopts a similar approach. He regularly informs his teams of what they have access to in their employee benefits package.
“It is not enough to just hand them a packet at their time of hire,” he said. “Instead, we feature key wellness benefits at our monthly company meetings, send out recurring emails updating our employees about any benefits changes, and we focus on placement.”
They Don’t Feel Supported
One in 10 employers say employees don’t use their wellness benefits because they don’t feel supported by their peers, the LifeWorks survey found. This shows a cultural issue.
Care Ultima’s president, Ryan Peck, addresses this issue with a simple solution—he uses his benefits, too.
“The best way to inspire someone is to lead by example,” said Peck. “We make sure that us leaders practice what we preach. We participate in the testimonials so everyone can see the CEO or the president use the same services that we encourage them to use.”
This helps build a culture around wellness. When everyone, including leadership, takes the time to focus on their personal health, employees are more inspired to do the same.
When you educate, demonstrate, and build a culture around wellness, employees will take advantage of the wellness benefits offered to them. More importantly, your team will be happier, healthier, and more productive.
| Chris Sullens is the Business Development Director Manager at LifeWorks, a company that delivers holistic and comprehensive well-being—physical, emotional, financial, professional & mental—through meaningful and purposeful technology and services. Follow LifeWorks on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. |