Employee Health and Wellness: Why It Matters & How to Create a Successful Program

Everyone knows the stereotype surrounding New Year’s resolutions. You create one with the best intentions (or simply because you feel obligated to—no judgements here), you ride a wave of optimism for anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and then the new habit disappears from your life faster than Christmas dinner leftovers from your fridge. In fact, only 9% of people who set resolutions say that they keep them throughout the year!

The stereotype is a funny and relatable phenomenon that everyone has experienced, but, in reality, health and wellness aren’t laughing matters. Employee health and wellness is even more vital because team members spend the vast majority of their days working for your business. 

What if your resolution as a business could help your employees stick to theirs? This is where health and wellness programs come into play. Here’s the ultimate lowdown on employee health and wellness and how to create a winning program.

What Is Employee Health and Wellness?

Put simply, employee wellness encompasses physical and mental practices that help a person attain better health outcomes. As an employer, you have a responsibility to try and assist your employees in their wellness goals, and that means more than just offering decent health insurance. Wellness programs, or additional health initiatives, are icing on the wellness cake that you can customize to fit your budget, your industry, and your employee needs.

A Quick History Lesson

Employer-sponsored health insurance has been popular since the 1940s, when companies needed to attract workers during WWII because of a massive labor shortage. But we’re not only talking about the standard benefits most companies offer now. 

Wellness programs are additional initiatives that promote employee health, and these didn’t appear until the 1970s. These early programs were mostly focused on physical activity and fitness. It wasn’t until the 1990s that employers started creating programs for mental health.

Where We Are Today

In today’s society, we’ve seen a boom in mental health care and support. With stress and anxiety at an all-time high, employees value a workplace that supports their mental and physical well-being. However, only 20% of people agree that their organizations care about their well-being.

Let’s not forget the opportunity costs. Employees who don’t feel emotionally, physically, and mentally healthy can have a big impact on your business:

• Employees who feel burned out are 2.6X more likely to look for a new job and 63% more likely to take sick days.
• Stress makes employees 3X more likely to quit.
• Employees with unhealthy diets are 66% more likely to experience productivity loss.
• Employees who struggle to exercise during the day are 96% more likely to have lower productivity.
• 80% of employees are stressed about their finances.
• Employees who lack social connections at work have a 39% higher quit rate.

At Awardco, we understand mental, emotional, and physical health are all equally important for an employee’s wellness, and this is what we want to help you figure out today. How can you make sure your employees are as happy and healthy as possible while at work? How can you encourage them to build healthy habits that can improve all aspects of their lives?

Wellness programs are your best bet.

What Are Employee Wellness Programs?

An employee wellness program is any plan or system to support employees' healthy behavior. Some of the more common ideas for these are a gym reimbursement program or offering healthy snacks in the break room. These types of programs are designed to help employees live their best life—but you don’t have to settle for cookie-cutter programs for your unique business.

If you’re struggling to think of better ideas that would fit with your people and your company culture, don’t stress! Read on to see some great ideas for wellness programs serving physical AND mental health (remember, you don’t want to neglect one or the other).

How Can You Improve Health and Wellness in the Workplace?

Office wellness programs can be your health bread and well-being butter. You can introduce programs, activities, and changes that make life in your office more health-conscious and double as enticing benefits for employees. Let’s break down the two aspects of wellness that we’ve mentioned so far: physical and mental.

Physical Wellness Programs

The many factors that contribute to physical wellness present a variety of opportunities for employee wellness programs. Here are some programs you can implement to boost employees’ physical health.

Fitness Programs

The aforementioned gym membership reimbursement is a good starting point for physical health, but you can—and should—do so much more. If you have the room for it, on-site fitness centers can be a step up because they allow employees to exercise right at the office for free. 

You may also consider offering yoga classes once a week. Yoga is great for flexibility, strength, and fitness, and giving your employees a chance for some light exercise during the workday could really boost their mood and productivity. Plus, yoga, especially when combined with meditation, is great for mental health and lowering stress levels (more on that later!).

Even if yoga classes aren’t your thing, any sort of physical activity at work can improve overall productivity, reduce absenteeism, and increase morale. Try to brainstorm programs for both fitness buffs and those who are just starting their fitness journey. And make them fun! 

Set up a step contest to see who walks the most or takes the most stairs. Sponsor fitness groups (tennis, running, basketball, etc.) for enthusiasts to meet and play with each other. It’s exciting to think about all of your options!

Cessation Programs

Physical health encompasses more than just fitness. Think about offering cessation programs of some sort. The most popular option is for tobacco cessation, but you can twist your program to fit any habit that your employees want to quit, such as bad sleeping or eating habits.

Healthy Eating Programs

Diet is another key component of physical health. Offer healthy options for snacking, and make sure that your employees have a long enough lunch to have time to grab something healthy instead of settling for fast food.‍

Vaccination Programs

With the lingering effects of the pandemic still hanging around, you could even offer free vaccinations (COVID-19 or other vaccines) throughout the year.

Mental Wellness Programs

Physical fitness is only half of the equation when it comes to employee health and well-being. The following are some ways you can support employees’ mental health at work.

Physical Practices for Mental Wellness

As we mentioned, yoga and meditation are great to help employees get in the right headspace while at work. Offering massages is another fantastic way to improve physical comfort while lowering stress and increasing happiness. 

Employee Assistance Programs

You can also choose from a variety of employee assistance programs, such as confidential therapy support, to help employees with stress or anxiety. Free or low-cost counseling can be instrumental in helping employees get the support they need to live their best lives (and give work their best efforts).

Room for Relaxation

If you have the space for it, you could provide a few rooms in the office for employees to go and relax and get away from work for a bit. You could even designate a room or two for power naps! 

On the flip side, if you don’t have a lot of space, let your employees get outside for a short walk each day. Nothing does more for mental wellness than good old-fashioned sunshine.

Flexible Work Programs

Let’s be honest, sometimes the best thing for your mental health is staying as far away from the office as possible (in person and in your thoughts). To that end, consider offering flex time to allow employees to customize their schedules to fit their needs. 

Vacation Programs

If you want to go above and beyond, you could copy BambooHR and offer paid-paid vacations (that looks like a typo, but it’s not!). This program covers things like hotel and flight expenses for employees who use their PTO to travel. Encourage your employees to take mental health breaks away from the office!

Enhance Your Wellness Programs with Incentives

Employee wellness is a multifaceted idea that you can tackle from a variety of angles. And if you’re worried about participation, incentivize people! Offer extra PTO for hitting a step goal, provide free lunch after yoga, or offer reward points through Awardco’s Earn platform for employees who participate in wellness programs to choose their own prizes.

What Can You Do for Employees Outside the Office?

There’s not much you can control outside of your office, especially when it comes to employee wellness. However, you can provide a few different programs that improve aspects of your employees’ personal lives and in turn their well-being:

• Transit options. Offer bike sharing or public transit incentives to improve physical wellness or reduce financial stressors.
• Flexible working conditions. Flexible hours and locations allow your employees to work when and where they are most comfortable and productive.
• PTO. Time off is vital for employee wellness. Offering unlimited PTO or flex time, or simply encouraging the use of PTO, can help employees get away from work to recharge.
• WFH equipment. If you have remote employees, you can outfit employees with the tools they need to work comfortably at home (One of Awardco’s clients did this, and it was awesome! Through our platform, employees can choose the WFH equipment that’s best for them).

When you offer employee wellness programs that help people improve their lives both at and away from work, you help your employees stay engaged, motivated, productive, and happy.‍

How Do You Incentivize Wellness Programs?

Nothing is worse than putting time and effort into a new initiative only to have employees ignore it or fail to take full advantage of it. So, how do you prevent your new wellness programs from being dumped on the pile of other abandoned New Year’s resolutions?

You need to plan and strategize effectively to give your program the foundation it needs to succeed.

1. Survey Your Employees

First, you need to gather information about your employees to see what people are interested in and what their goals are:

• Survey them to learn where they want to improve, what goals they have, what types of activities they’re interested in, etc.
• Conduct a health risk assessment to determine a baseline of the health of your workforce. See the CDC’s guide for health assessments to ensure you follow legal guidelines.

2. Communicate with Management

Getting management's support is crucial for things like program funding, organizational support, and approving processes, which is why you should be open and communicative with them from the start.

The most important thing to do is create a business case that shows the impact of wellness on business outcomes. To help with that, check out this PDF going over the business case for employee wellness.

Based on the information you learned about employee wellness, health goals, and gaps to fill, make short- and long-term goals for your program. List out benefits you can expect from a powerful wellness program with management support behind it. This type of information is foundational for getting leadership buy-in.

3. Gather a Wellness Committee

Get internal support and increase reach and excitement with an employee-driven committee to help spread the word about the wellness culture. Committee members should be passionate about wellness and have the time needed to really push the program forward.

Make sure the committee is representative of diverse teams and groups so that everyone’s interests are looked after. 

This type of committee will take the burden of administering every aspect of your wellness program off HR’s shoulders.

4. Design the Specifics of Your Wellness Programs

With your support system, goals, and budgets in place, you’re ready to design the actual program. Keeping in mind your employees’ needs and interests, decide where your wellness incentives will focus. 

Ideas include:

• Weight loss programs
• Stress reduction programs
• Nutrition education programs
• Financial wellness programs
• Exercise regime programs

It’s up to you to decide if you want to run multiple sub-programs under your wellness incentive or start with one and build more as necessary. Think of effective ways to use your budget, provide resources, and communicate the program with everyone. Also think of ways to keep management involved to really keep the program top of mind.

5. Decide on Incentives and Rewards

Now comes the fun part. Despite everyone’s best intentions, wellness goals are often forgotten after a time. Think about your New Year’s resolutions—if you’re anything like us, many of them have already been dropped by the wayside.

So, how can you help your employees stay excited and motivated to participate in your program and improve their wellness? With incentives, of course!

Incentives provide the double benefit of driving engagement with your program and keeping people motivated long-term because even if employees’ intrinsic motivation falters, their external motivation of gaining rewards can keep them participating.

Some incentive reward ideas include:

• Give employees their choice of rewards from a wellness-centric catalog. Rewards such as exercise equipment or clothing, kitchen equipment, and mindfulness app subscriptions can be great incentives that feed into overall wellness. And giving employees more choices allows them to get rewards that are meaningful to them.
• Offer cascading cash rewards. Set up a tier system that rewards participation. For those who participate in one aspect of your wellness program, offer a small reward. For those who participate in two or more, offer progressively larger rewards.‍
• Offer work-life balance rewards. The ultimate way to maintain wellness is with time away from work to relax and unwind. Offer PTO, coupons to a spa, or even hotel stays at a dream destination for those who really jump into the wellness program.

With Awardco’s Reward program, you can allocate points to employees for accomplishing certain health goals or participating in wellness programs. And the best part is, your employees can then use their points to get items they actually want! Improved health plus free stuff equals happy employees (math class did have its use!).

4 Sample Wellness Program Ideas

Below are four examples of wellness programs that target different aspects of well-being. The key is that these are just examples to help get your juices flowing—remember, you should find wellness initiatives and rewards that speak to your employees.

Progressive Physical Wellness Incentives

Physical wellness can focus on all kinds of things—walking more each day, losing a certain amount of weight, going to the gym a few times a week, or anything like that. (Remember, look at your survey and health risk assessment to find out what people need and want!)

You can encourage team members to participate in these activities through methods like: 

• Gamification: Incorporate gamification elements like leaderboards, challenges, and badges to increase engagement.
• Partnering with fitness apps: Partner with fitness apps like Fitbit or Apple Health to track progress and offer additional incentives.
• Wellness challenges: Organize team or individual wellness challenges, such as step challenges or healthy eating competitions. Leverage communication platforms like Slack to help participants update and keep one another accountable.

After you’ve built the actual program out, build incentives that reward maintained participation, such as:

• An extra day of PTO after a month
• Two days of PTO after six months
• A full week of vacation after a year

Participation-Based Mental Wellness Incentives

Reward employees each time they participate in mental health initiatives. Examples of initiatives that offer mental health resources and support include: 

• Mental health awareness campaigns: Run campaigns to educate employees about mental health issues and reduce stigma.
• Flexible work arrangements: Offer flexible work arrangements, such as remote work or flexible hours, to reduce stress and improve work-life balance.
• Mindfulness and meditation apps: Provide access to mindfulness and meditation apps to help employees manage stress and improve focus.

You can also incentivize employees’ personal mental health goals by reimbursing therapy costs, offering spa gift cards, or something similar.

Performance-Based Financial Wellness Incentives

Now, this may sound weird, but performance-based incentives are a great way to push wellness behaviors. How can they apply to financial wellness? Think about employees’ goals. Do they want to build an emergency savings account? Do they want to start investing? Do they want to buy a new car?

Help employees create actionable steps to achieve these goals, and then reward them as they hit certain milestones (such as saving a certain amount, paying off a debt, etc.). Hitting financial goals is exciting enough, but adding a work-sponsored reward on top of that will really cement healthy behaviors.

Here are some ideas: 

• Financial literacy workshops: Offer workshops on budgeting, saving, investing, and debt management.
• Financial counseling services: Provide access to financial counseling services to help employees with specific financial challenges.
• Employer-sponsored retirement plans: Offer employer-sponsored retirement plans with matching contributions to encourage long-term savings.

Two-in-One Social Wellness Incentives

Do your employees want to learn a new skill, make new friends, or otherwise enhance their social well-being? You can build an incentive that helps them achieve their goals and rewards them at the same time.

Set up activities that employees can participate in during work hours. We’re talking: 

• Volunteer opportunities: Organize volunteer opportunities to give back to the community and promote social connection.
• Social clubs: Encourage the formation of social clubs based on shared interests, such as book clubs, sports teams, or hobby groups.
• Team-building activities: Plan team-building activities or games to elevate rapport in the workplace.

These activities provide the opportunity to socialize with new people while also being rewarded with time away from work. It’s a win-win!

In a Nutshell…

Wellness programs are a win-win for both employees and employers. You can create a healthier, happier, and more productive workforce by implementing strategies that promote physical, mental, and financial health. 

Employees benefit from improved well-being, increased job satisfaction, and reduced stress. Employers reap the rewards of lower healthcare costs, increased productivity, and improved employee retention. 

Don’t let your wellness program be another good intention that falls by the wayside (you know what they say about roads paved with good intentions…). Take the initiative to find a handful of wellness programs that are right for you. 

Incentivize Employee Health & Wellness Today

It’s no secret: Employees perform better when they’re happy, stress-free, and physically fit. Absenteeism and sickness go down while productivity and retention go up. With these strategies, you can build a wellness program that incentivizes employee participation and rewards them for putting in the effort.

Do you want to build your own custom wellness incentives, complete with powerful reporting, automated administration, and millions of reward options? Awardco’s got you covered—learn more about our incentives today!