The "build it and they will come" approach may apply to certain fictional movies or building a Starbucks. But when it comes to building an onsite clinic, employees aren't always stepping over each other to get in. We at Healthstat understand the challenge of engaging your employees more than any other health and wellness provider.
Why? It’s because the agreement we extend to our clients contains a guaranteed ROI. We are so confident in our strategies that we put our own fees at risk. Engagement is the key to getting your employees on a path to wellness and thereby reducing their absenteeism and maximizing their on the job performance.
Engaging Your Employees to Use Your Onsite Clinic
Here are 5 key strategies for ensuring successful wellness programs that we drive.
1. Set measurable program goals.
A successful wellness program can impact many measurements – employee health status, absenteeism, the cost of medical claims and more. Identify the improvements you want to see, define how to measure these key indicators year over year, and then target your programs to affect those specific changes.
2. Identify your champions.
Your organization has to commit to get fit. Take steps toward establishing a culture of wellness. Involve as many employees as possible to spread awareness and increase participation. This will energize support among the employees as well as the leadership team. Nothing succeeds like success.
3. Know what success is.
Each incremental improvement in a person’s health behaviors is a step toward better health. We are asking people to make changes that last a lifetime, so those changes have to be sustainable, and solid enough to build on in the future. Wellness is not a one-time thing, it is a lifetime process.
4. Approach the whole person.
One of the biggest things to emerge in the behavioral change field in recent years is the focus on multiple behavior change. How do we approach the whole person who may have multiple behaviors that we are trying to impact? Don't overwhelm them. Treat each behavior change based on how ready the individual is to address that particular element. It's important not to make a person feel like they have to change everything all at once. For each challenge, there is a next step to success. The right message at the right time can help the person cross that bridge.
5. Know your audience.
What barriers do people have to improving their wellness? These days, so many of us know we should be taking better care of ourselves, but there's a gap between what we know and what we do. When you've tried and failed over and over to make sweeping lifestyle changes, it's hard to work up the inspiration to try again. But a successful program will focus on what it takes to move someone forward to the very next step. And as they take that one positive step at a time, they feel more in control of their own well-being. Striving for - and achieving - small goals helps people to stay engaged. And an occasional backslide doesn't have to mean it's game over. Small successes can provide the fire in the belly that keeps motivation alive on the ultimate pathway toward fulfillment. Health goals are achieved when you never stop trying.
