Corporate wellness is on the verge of a massive evolution. Today, most companies view employee wellness as living squarely in the domain of the employees themselves: “You need to take care of your health and mental well-being. We’re a company, not a health spa.” The majority of companies don’t address wellness in any meaningful way, while a few others are providing silo programs to their employees here and there—annual screenings, a lecture on stress, or flu clinics—in hopes that their employees will take the ball and run with it. Meanwhile, there are the early adopter companies who are creating progressive wellness cultures that attract, develop, and retain top talent.
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Indeed, making wellness work in our companies requires a cultural shift. This shift requires company leaders to embrace the fact that healthy people make better employees, and better employees make more successful companies. Employees that are encouraged and supported in creating physical, mental, and financial health are not only more creative and productive, they’re also happier. Alongside that, reduced corporate medical insurance costs, reduced absenteeism and presenteeism, and increased productivity produce significant positive effect on the bottom line. A wellness culture is a win/win.
When I help companies create a culture of wellness, we work to ensure that each key component of the office environment is lending to the creation and long-term reinforcement of whole-person health. Creating a progressive wellness culture requires fostering a workplace that encourages and promotes the well-being of your employees. It means implementing sustainable programming, platforms, environment, leadership, and messaging that guides and supports employees in creating healthy habits—of body and mind—that resonate through both their personal and professional lives. Culture is the key to making wellness work.
How else to make wellness work? When creating any foundational program or lasting cultural shift in your company, there are nine key areas to address:
- Leadership buy-in
- Effective internal culture management
- Needs assessment
- Alignment
- Goals and metrics
- Relevancy
- Creativity
- Marketing and communication
- Post-launch reinforcement
Flush out what will gain traction in your specific company so that you can best build a culture that saves your company money, develops employee engagement, and supports employees in bringing their most present, creative, productive selves to work each day.
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Embracing a wellness culture is part of what will define successful companies in the next five to seven years. The Gen Y generation is aging into middle and upper management, and the Gen Z population—a cohort larger than the baby boomer generation—is beginning to enter the workforce. These are generations of people who require more from their jobs than a paycheck; they want to grow personally and professionally, and a wellness culture is one of their top desires. If you want to stay competitive, you must make wellness work. Create a progressive wellness culture where employees feel healthy, focused, and supported while your company enjoys better success.