How to plan your workplace wellness program for 2022

2022 will be the year of workplace wellness.

The movement is gathering momentum and companies are recognising the strategic advantage of having a healthy and well-adjusted workforce, as well as the impact their actions can have in achieving this.

Even companies that have traditionally dragged their feet on the subject are realising that it doesn’t matter if employee wellness is their responsibility, because employee unwellness is most certainly their problem.

Initiating some sort of workplace wellness program will be commonplace in the coming months and years, which begs the question, how do we do this right?

Whilst every company is different, and all will require a different approach, the process for how this approach is arrived at is always the same.

It starts and ends with the 5 D’s of workplace wellness: Discover, Design, Delegate, Deliver, Determine.

Discover

A thorough discovery of needs must be completed before any program is implemented.

What are your goals and objectives?

What is the current health status of your employees?

Where are the health gaps in your workforce?

What are the greatest risks to your employees?

What are the barriers to improving health in your company?

Before you can initiate a program, you must gather as much information as possible,

Without first identifying the need, you can’t develop an effective plan.

Design

Once you know what our goals are, you can develop a plan to achieve them.

What did you identify as the greatest risks to your workforce?

What steps are you going to put in place to address them?

Which initiatives will run in which months/weeks/days?

This must be a clear and concise plan, with a definitive timeline, of how to address each area of concern identified in the discovery phase.

If you identified smoking as a major issue, what will your smoking cessation program look like?

If inactivity is the main problem, will you initiate lunchtime exercise classes? Encourage microbreaks? Subsidise gym memberships?

No matter what your area of focus, there needs to be a step by step plan to address it to ensure your plan is both efficient and effective.

Delegate

Once you have a clear plan in place, determine who will be responsible for each component.

Who will run the program? Ideally this is one person who oversees the whole operation.

Who will your ‘wellness champions’ be? Wellness champions are crucial in driving your program forward and maintaining engagement all the way through.

Which initiatives can you run in-house?

Which will you have to source external providers for?

Ensure that all stakeholders have a clear understanding of what is required of them and when so there is no confusion and things can run smoothly. 

Deliver

This seems like the most obvious step, but it is also the most important.

All the planning in the world will do no good if we don’t put it into action.

Do not wait for the perfect time to implement the program.

Do not wait until ‘this project gets completed’ or ‘when things calm down a bit’, implement the program now.

Take action.

You don’t have to have it all figured out and it doesn’t have to start perfectly.

The program will grow and change through trial and error so the most important thing, just like with any truly great thing that we do, is to start.

Determine

Once your program is up and running you need to determine whether or not it is effective, and that means measuring ROI and VOI.

What metrics have you decided to gauge it with?

You could do it by: absenteeism, WorkCover claims, staff turnover, insurance premiums or any other hard data metric.

The VOI is less simple to calculate but can be far more valuable.

These include increased productivity, improved morale, happier staff, increased job satisfaction, better staff engagement, company goodwill and a range of others.

These metrics should be measured frequently and accurately.

If the ROI is positive, that’s good, you’re on the right track.

If it’s negative, it doesn’t mean you should give up, it means you should adapt your approach.

Positive health program ROI is achievable in every company, you just need the right health program.

The age of workplace wellness is well and truly here, and the benefits of getting this right will be far reaching.

Now, it’s just a matter of knowing what the issues are and making a plan to address them.

It really is that simple.

For a step-by-step guide of exactly how to implement these steps, along with full templates and instructions on building your own workplace wellness program, check out the Workplace Wellness Blueprint course, or get in touch with Kinex Health.