Unlock the secret to a successful workplace wellbeing program.

Workplace health promotion strategies continue to evolve. But are the ideas really changing, or are we just throwing new tools at old problems? For many employers, the problem lies not within their specifically chosen vendor or this year’s ‘beta version’ of their favorite tool, but rather in the structure of their approach in general. Program pieces are not implemented with a strong strategic process or alignment. Instead, many programs have strong start points and end points but lack considerable consistency and strategy to help people navigate the area in between. Unfortunately, it’s that ‘in between’ where people’s behavioral journey evolves.

Sustained behavior change is what ultimately improves employee health and performance, and most workplace wellness programs lack the strategic backbone to effectively change health behaviors and outcomes.

In the wellness industry new companies, new technologies, and new iterations seem to germinate constantly. And yet while so much changes, there’s so much that stays the same. New products and technologies are touted as innovative and game changing, and yet many of their applications rely on principles of traditional approaches which are known to be flawed: short-term challenges, self-directed learning, sleeker looking platforms or apps, more accurate activity trackers, smarter bean-counters for incentive systems...

Many of these strategies still rely too heavily on the employee being proactive. That is, making the assumption that they are at an advanced enough stage of readiness to engage with the platform or be convinced to engage via incentives. However, the majority of people are not at an advanced enough stage of readiness, and incentives do not foster the type of inherent motivation required to get them there (refer to previous posts for more discussion on the down sides of incentives). Many of the strategies we continue to see defer to the traditional: testing to identify risk, filter high-risk people into disease management while trying to get the rest to proactively engage in optional challenges, opt-in coaching or requiring people to maintain or improve their test results in order to receive incentives the following year.

Improving health and changing behavior (in a sustainable way) is a lifelong endeavor. Stop-start programs like challenge-based programs can be disjointed and begin to feel repetitive. Testing, triage, clinical compliance and retesting puts a lot of emphasis on outcomes without giving people the physical and mental tools to sustainably evolve their behaviors in the middle – that is, people might reach goals in the short term, but you haven’t changed their mindset or behaviors for the long term.

More evolved programs (ones with proven long term improvements to health risks and costs like HBD's) are ones that blur the boundaries between the separate health promotion activities. Rather than a distinct series of events, services, challenges or programs which people opt-in to or are ushered into via incentive plans (which inevitably leads to employees participating in some aspects but not others); elements of advanced programs seamlessly fit together and flow from one to the other. Each additional element builds on and progresses the previous. Each additional element reinforces the last and provides a new layer of information that builds motivation and skills for change. The result is less of a disjointed ‘two-steps forward, one-step backwards’ stumble towards the finish line, and more of a strategic and progressive journey towards a healthier workforce.

Integrated programs that proactively engage people at all stages of readiness and show them the relationship between various pillars of health (i.e. an overall health program addressing physical and mental wellbeing instead of siloed programs for isolated elements of health like weight loss, stress management or smoking cessation…which, by the way, are all inter-related), and which provide ongoing and consistent reinforcement of key skills and benefits make more sense and are more actionable in the real world.

So next time you review your workplace health promotion initiatives or consider your choice of vendor, look beyond their slick marketing, self-defined success data, and their "next-best" hype. If they are promoting themselves as a silver-bullet; think about how successful all the previous "silver-bullets" have been in the health industry. The allure of a sleek quick-fix solution for all our health woes is intoxicating - it drives a $6 trillion dollar consumer wellness market. The truth is there is no quick fix. You inherently know that the slide to poor health didn't happen overnight, and logically, the pathway back to good health isn't like flipping a switch. It's a process of progressive education and healthy habit adoption.

Perhaps then, your next true advancement in workplace health is not looking for that next great product or technology that could add another layer or new dimension to your program. Your program may already have too many dimensions. Instead, the real innovation might be stripping back some layers and getting to the core of providing a more evidence-based structured, integrated, and progressive approach to filling the gaps between your start and end points. A more robust way to consistently engage and educate a greater proportion of your workforce that will actually shift the needle on their health behaviors and outcomes.

Look to a solution with a proven track record and repeated improvements in actual group health behaviors and outcomes. A successful workplace wellbeing solution like HBD.

HBD International (Health by Design) are experts in population health behavior change. For 30 years, our programs have been strategically designed and tailored to fit our client’s workflow and employee life flow. The result is more sustained engagement (programs average over 80% ongoing month-to-month participation from the total workforce without incentives) and high sustainable behavior change across multiple risk areas (our programs average over 65% of the entire workforce improving health behaviors or health risk measures).

We don’t rely on gimmicks or "quick-fixes"; we rely on evidence based-methodology, expert tailoring and exceptional customer service (or to put it simply: old fashioned hard work) to achieve outcomes that exceed global workplace wellness industry averages by more than 400%.

From stress, engagement and high performance to general health, wellbeing, and injury prevention; If you want to truly improve the health, costs, and performance of your workforce population, then give us a call and learn more about what we can do for you.