Tips to Create a Better Wellness Program

When it comes to employee wellness, we all want long-term results, not just quick-fixes. Unfortunately, once we’ve decided to implement a wellness initiative we can get caught up a mindset of getting it done “now.”  And that attitude more than any can sink a wellness effort before it even gets going. When we realize that wellness is a collection of old habits that die hard.  We can then understand that our focus needs to be on changing those habits…something that takes time. 

According to Psychology Today, it takes 66 days to form a habit. Whether that habit is thirty minutes on the treadmill, running a mile, or eating more fruits and vegetables, it takes more than two months for it to stick. The key then is to focus a program on turning those kinds of wellness actions into regular habits.

Here are some ideas to help you create a program that focuses your employees on forming healthier habits:

• Do research to know what your employees want to gain from the program and help them with their goals; exercise, weight loss, lowering cholesterol or blood sugar, etc.  Every company finds different results so it’s important to find what the participation motivation is for your organization and their demographics 
• Test different formats, offer different program activation dates, different days of the week, times of the day, etc. Know the best design for your situation that allows the most participation.
• Measure your performance often. If your program structure or incentives aren’t motivating positive change, the program won’t be effective. Adjust and relaunch the structure when necessary.
• Embrace feedback. Make sure your employee population likes the program. While it may be tough to get in shape, or learn to eat healthy, employees should be able to see the value to their overall well being. Getting feedback ensures your program is on the right track, and if it’s not, you can change it in process rather than waiting weeks or months and having to overhaul the program. 
• Use incentives strategically. They should be about the kind of things that your employees want, not what you think they want or what you want them to have. The longevity and memory of the reward helps drive motivation to the next program milestone, and the more milestones, the more success your program recognizes.
• Communicate your successes.  It’s true that nothing succeeds like success.  Your employees like to see success and want to emulate those who are having it. 

A Positive Approach to Reduce Absenteeism

Absenteeism is expensive. Some estimates put the direct costs of unscheduled absences at $2600 - $3600 per year, per employee, and those are just the potential direct costs. Indirect costs of high employee absenteeism can range from low productivity of the frustrated employees who have to make up the slack to a lowered respect for management for putting up with it.   

If you periodically experience a spate of absenteeism try taking a positive approach to it in the form of well-planned incentives.  It can be a good strategic decision that can save a great deal of bottom line profit and add to a positive and engaged employee base.

Most company attendance policies focus only on the consequences and penalties associated with poor attendance.  While it is important to have this "stick-side" as a policy, consider the alternative of using the “carrot-side” as well.  Simple behavior science knows that reinforcing good behaviors has more lasting value to you than punishing bad ones.  Including incentives for employees who exemplify good attendance can be just as effective for improving absenteeism as penalizing them for noncompliance.

A Presenteeism Program

Things to consider when planning your incentive program:

• Set the timing for the program to include seasons where you have the most absences,
• Have a clear start and stop date
• Set clear goals for the program that are based on realistic expectations and use past performance as the measurement to start.  Unrealistic goal setting will guarantee that you program will fail.
• Communicate the program measurement and improvements before, during and after program completion
• Start awarding minor awards at achieving an improvement to the base, with escalating awards for incremental improvement. Think inspirational yet achievable when setting attendance rewards.
• At program conclusion make sure you recognize those employees with perfect attendance.
• The logic of the program should be as transparent as possible to avoid disputes.
• Finally, make sure the program isn't penalizing employees for allowable absences.

How Can Incentives Promote Healthy Behaviors?

Seema Verma, the CMS Administrator, and Adam Boehler, the Director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, have been outspoken regarding the need to address proactively keeping people healthy, instead of waiting until they get sick and require expensive services.  In today’s healthcare world this is known as value-based care. 

In value-based care, providers are rewarded for the relative health of their patients, instead of getting paid to treat them when they are ill.  The management of chronic conditions is a key to lowering healthcare costs and improving patient outcomes. 

What’s the Cost?

60% of all Americans have at least one chronic condition, and 40% have two or more.  These are the leading drivers of the nation’s $3.3 trillion in annual health care costs.

The Center for Disease Control estimates that that eliminating three risk factors – poor diet, inactivity, and smoking – would prevent: 80% of heart disease and stroke; 80% of type 2 diabetes; and, 40% of cancer.  While elimination might be unattainable to some, reduction of these is certainly a real goal.

The Need for Incentives

A survey of 2500 consumers conducted by Survata in association with HealthEdge in 2018, found that 53% of millennials want more incentives for healthy behaviors from their health plan.  It is well known in the award industry that properly designed wellness incentive programs can and will produce results.  When just the communications of the desire for a change in wellness habits doesn’t work, incentives have.  They can get employees off the couch, eating right, smoking less and enrolled and involved in the classes and programs offered to help them along the way  And they can keep them on the path.  Changing habits is hard, but motivation can help get it done.

A survey conducted by Incentive Research Foundation revealed that almost 59% of wellness programs contain gift cards as awards for certain objectives such as weight loss, exercise, smoking cessation, and enrolling and completing parts of the program.  An Aflac study found that 61% of employees agree that they have made healthier lifestyle choices because of these types of wellness activities. 

And among those incentives and programs for healthy behaviors, it has been proven that cash rewards do not have a sustained impact on life habits. Incentives such as gift cards for healthy habits make a long-lasting difference, helping to contain costs of healthcare, improve overall health outcomes and boost employee engagement.

A Good Reason for Peer to Peer Employee Recognition

Current incentive research shows that over 80% of businesses use rewards to overcome business challenges.  According to Gallup 57% of baby boomers, 76% of gen Xer’s, and 81% of millennials say that receiving recognition better connects them to their organization’s products and services.

Employees today want to work at companies where they are recognized for their performance.  And it’s not just management to employee recognition that is important.  Incentive research also shows that 80% of millennials say that the act of giving someone else recognition makes them want to stay at a company longer when the company cares about and invests in their employees.

Take the time to look through your organization for award opportunities to increase engagement.  Get your employees to become more engaged in company initiatives, like taking a company survey, signing up for a service, or joining a committee.

Show appreciation and build a company culture where employees and customers feel valued. When you do you will have a workforce that is more likely to feel good about where and for whom they work.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

The Confusion Surrounding Employee Engagement

“Employee Engagement” as a term (and now culture) has been around a long time. Before that it was called “Employee Satisfaction.”  Not to oversimplify it, but employee satisfaction had little or no connection to performance.  With major changes in industry and more emphasis on service, there began a more pronounced link between HR and the “service-profit” chain and Employee Engagement was born. 

We googled “employee engagement” in preparation for this post and were rewarded with over 83 million answers.  HR consulting firms, training consultants, research companies, statistical analysis firms and even the award industry each define it in relation to their own revenue.  Is it any wonder why executives seem to be a little chagrined by the entire subject?  A simple concept it isn’t.  From 1996 to 2012, nearly 25 million employees in almost 3 million workgroups from 195 countries have completed Gallup's Q12®survey…the father of the statistics used in the design of how best to measure EE. This does everything except answer the one question everyone wanted to know…why.

You can readily see how things became confusing when the major HR consulting firms jumped onto the employee-engagement fray with their own, branded, proprietary, employee-engagement surveys, also based on statistical analysis. Even the academic community is confused by the term “employee engagement” because it was developed by consulting firms outside of the normal channels of academic research. 

The award industry hangs their hat on seemingly general concurrence that employee recognition helps promote employee satisfaction, which in turn is an important fundamental of employee engagement.  This was reinforced by the Conference Board and the Harvard Business School with a meta-analysis that compared the main employee-engagement approaches side-by-side.  

This meta-analysis concluded that “employee engagement” boils down to an emotional and intellectual connection between employees and their employers that results in improved performance.  

This was reconfirmed by two academic researchers, Nitin Nohria, the dean of the Harvard Business School, and Paul Lawrence, an organizational-behavior pioneer, in their books “Driven,” and “Driven to Lead.” These books built a new 4-drive motivational model of Employee Motivation.  This model created the emotional connection discovered by the meta-analysis…when these universal drives are satisfied; employees experience emotional pleasure and feel engaged.  Employee recognition helps to drive that emotional pleasure.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net

Do Your Employees Feel Respected?

“Respect is like air. As long as it’s present, nobody thinks about it. But if you take it away, it’s all that people can think about.”

                                                            “Crucial Conversations” by Ron McMillan

In research of nearly 20,000 employees worldwide conducted by Christine Porath, respondents ranked respect as the most important leadership behavior.  Yet many surveys also report that over half of employees claim that they don’t regularly get respect.  What’s the disconnect?  One answer may be that leaders may simply be unaware of the problem.  While those employees who aren’t shown respect are keenly aware of its absence, others, especially those in managerial or other high-status jobs don’t think about it very much. But there are other issues to consider.

Respect and Recognition Go hand-in-hand

Do leaders have a good understanding of what constitutes workplace respect?  If not, even well-meaning efforts to provide a respectful workplace may fall short.  With the ‘PC” nature of today’s culture, it’s hard to imagine a workplace where respect isn’t accorded equally to all members of a work group or the organization; it meets the universal need to make them all feel included. It should be standard practice.  We have no doubt that management consistently affirms that respect is owed to all personnel.  But when employees display valued qualities or behaviors that exceed expectations they are not just owed standard respect they have earned the respect that should be confirmed with recognition, and at times formal recognition. 

In fact some research by Arizona State shows…

“When the standard owed respect and earned respect is not in balance it can create frustration for workers. Workplaces with lots of owed respect but little earned respect can make individual achievement a low priority for employees, because they perceive that everyone will be treated the same regardless of performance. By contrast, workplaces with low owed respect but high earned respect can encourage excessive competition among employees…possibly good for some environments (sales force) but can hinder people from sharing critical knowledge about their successes and failures, and it often promotes cutthroat, zero-sum behavior”

Respect in any organization is important because it is a great feedback mechanism and provides the building blocks for growth.  So too, recognizing the respect earned through achievement helps to solidify that respect in the organization. This will bring tremendous benefits to the company.  It is no secret that employees who say they feel respected are more satisfied with their jobs and more grateful for—and loyal to—their companies.

For more information on Ultimate Choice Inc.’s products or services or other white papers please contact us at Ultimatechoiceinfo@cox.net