Designing the Best Workplace Wellness Program

As discussed in our last post, wellness programs have been around for at least two decades but there is a surprising lack of empirical evidence that they achieve their stated goals.  The reason according to the experts is that they are rarely designed and implemented properly.  This paper by Johns Hopkins provides sound advice on ways to make a wellness program successful.  Following we have listed some of that advice. 

Administering health risk assessments only

Simply surveying employees for risk and even providing the screenings and other health tests does not motivate change.  You must give your employees tools like making wellness activities convenient and accessible and give them the ability to track their behavior.

Give it time

Health change is a process that needs to be sustained.  It will take up to five years to start to lower health care costs and decrease health care use.  You won’t change poor health habits by just asking employees to fill out a questionnaire.

Long term financial incentive programs are popular but not necessarily effective

Inducements to motivate change are based on behavioral theory of consequences that drive behavior.  Consequences must be positive, immediate and certain to be effective.  Financial incentives are certainly positive, but very uncertain when dealing with health change and never immediate. Large incentives that an tie as much as 20% of the cost of health coverage to achieving a health goal are very rare.  

Offering smart incentives

There is strong evidence that incentives to drive participation rates, preferably $ 50 to $100 will keep employees engaged and motivated to begin efforts to achieve self-determined health goals can be effective. 

Short term promotions ineffective

Short term or random acts (Biggest Loser, Pedometer challenges etc.) may be good to add excitement at the beginning or your program but not effective in the long term. You need to concentrate more on long term progress. 

Effective communications are essential

A healthy company culture is built intentionally.  Use communications to build a total health model into every aspect of business practice, from company policies to everyday work activities. Use communications that’s supportive of career, emotional, financial, physical and social well-being – not just an health fair.  Strategic communication will lead to lead to greater engagement

Leadership commitment and support 

It should go without saying, but complete commitment from all executives and continued ongoing support at all management levels is critical to a successful health promotion.  They must also lead by example. 

You can’t impose workplace health

Workers must own the program, understand how they benefit and the company benefit and are given a role in the ongoing operation with regular surveys and focus groups.

There are a myriad of ideas and things that can be done to build a culture of health in your organization.  By searching those out and adhering to the above practices you have the best chance of implementing a program that will produce the long term results you are looking for.

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

Do Workplace Wellness Programs Really Improve Worker’s Health?

Workplace wellness programs have been around for more than a couple decades, but there is a surprising lack of empirical evidence that they achieve their stated goals.  Most any kind of programs that companies implement are evidence-based with statistics to back up the program performance.  For wellness programs there is scant evidence based information on whether they produced desired results.

Most of the data on wellness programs comes from the vendors who actually provide the programs and that data can be questionable and fraught with data gathering mistakes.  For example for weight loss programs they may show: weight changes only for those

participating in the program vs those who don’t; no before or after measurements to show changes based on the program vs other random variations; no analysis for workers who may have regained weight after the program; reporting average weight loss per those who lost weight, but not disclosing what actual percentage of employees lost weight, etc. It would seem that the wellness vendors want to report only successes, not failures.   

While the chief goal of a wellness program is to improve employee health, the companion

goal is to control healthcare spending. It is hard to get an accurate view of how well these programs work because many unsuccessful programs just aren’t reported.  However, these programs can work.  A study by Johns Hopkins provides evidence that when properly designed and implemented, a wellness program can add to the health and productivity of the employees and the profitability of the business. 

In addition, Johnson and Johnson has published dozens of studies showing their wellness programs have improved employee health, saved millions in health care costs and

enhanced employee productivity.  They designed their programs with the proper measurement and analysis as a starting point and continue throughout with smart collection and analysis of data. 

Without the data at hand, many companies pick and choose options for wellness programs blindly which can do a disservice to employees and their company.  In the end, you don’t necessarily need the latest fashion fitness wearable or new tennis shoes to start your program.  What you do need is sold analysis, data and the metrics necessary to prove the results on an ongoing basis

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

Combining Human Drives for Better Reward Programs

In their book “Driven: How Human Nature Shapes Our Choices,” Harvard Business School professors Paul Lawrence and Nitin Nohria laid out a new theory on human behavior. The idea: we are all influenced and guided by four drives: acquiring, bonding, learning, and defending. Recent research by the Incentive Research Federations on the neuroscience of behavior economics discusses these drives and their significance to current reward and incentive planners.

Nohria and Lawrence found that the drives act as motivational “hot buttons” and when pressed individually motivation can rise marginally…but when combined motivation can grow exponentially causing large impacts to engagement, retention and commitment.   The IRF research essentially concludes that reward and recognition systems can provide companies with a powerful tool because this single intervention can activate these four drives.  Let’s examine each drive in relation to a reward and recognition program:

Drive to Acquire

Employees are driven to acquire tangible goods, intangible skills and status.  Reward systems are driven by goal setting which requires clear and defined consequences for achieving them.  They train managers to recognize positive work performance aligned to the behaviors they are trying to achieve.

Drive to Bond

Employees desire to have authentic relationships with other employees. Companies want employees to work in partnership to solve difficult problems.  When organizations provide rewards for group achievement they are working in tandem with the drive to bond.

Drive to Innovate

It’s natural for employees to want to learn more about their company as well as the world around them.  They can use the knowledge to create new thoughts, systems, processes, relationships and goods based on what they learn. Organizations can add time to their recognition efforts to allow employees to learn and formulate ideas, awarding them for those ideas that are implemented.

Drive to Defend

Employees want to be safe and secure and they will defend the objects, people and ideas they hold dear.  Companies want to minimize the activation of this drive and the negativity that comes along with it.  They can use the communication channels associated with reward and recognition systems to remind employees often of their importance to the companies mission. 

In summary the IRF research maintains that…

“In a single instance of giving an employee a reward or recognition, the organization allows an employee to acquire status (and potentially good or services), to bond with their team or the person giving the recognition, to more deeply comprehend what is important to the organization, and to defend the very deeply held belief that he or she is good at what they do and has chosen the right organization for employment.

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

Do You Have a Do It Yourself Sales Incentive Mentality?

The traditional carrot-and-stick type incentive programs put the focus solely on the result, and not on the means of achieving the result. While these types of programs can achieve results, they can also encourage bad behaviors that can do damage to the brand and hurt sales in the long run by creating unhappy customers who speak out on social media. It’s well known what some salespeople can do in narrowly focused programs – shift the timing of sales to maximize points, sell something a customer doesn’t want, push harder than is appropriate, make promises that can’t be kept, etc. It is unfortunate, but since the only program measure is the outcome, some salespeople do resort to such tactics!

For many years the incentive industry has extolled the importance of designing programs that not only address the results, but also the best ways to achieve them. The industry is full of research and papers from groups like Incentive Marketing Association, PPAI, SITE, Incentive Gift Card Council, Rewards and Recognition Network and the Incentive Research Foundation.  These organizations house a wealth of knowledge and have produced extensive research to help design incentive and recognition programs that will produce results.  Unfortunately these materials are almost never used.  Why?

In the high energy quick fix mentality of today’s business, people planning incentive programs are looking for a quick fix or a bright shiny object to motivate and often don’t want to hear about, let alone pay for, a program design process, even with the promise of better results or return-on-investment measurement. Many managers feel qualified to follow their own instincts. This often boils down to a determination that motivation is just a matter of dangling desirable carrots with perhaps a few unwritten threats thrown in for good measure. 

If you are interested in planning a sales incentive program we would advise you to engage the award companies who have the knowledge to help you make it successful. Award companies have knowledge to design programs based on accumulated best practices.  Just like the great mechanic, they not only know how to use a wrench, they know what nut to turn. 

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