Wellness Success through Longevity

Wellness is an important topic in today’s business world. In businesses of all sizes, you will find wellness initiatives. The companies that have seen success have seen one big thing. They have seen their employees buy into the concept. That is the most important factor when it comes to the success of a wellness program.

There are many aspects of wellness, but success is actually quite simple. It’s not about flashy tools or huge budgets. It’s more about the very people the program is for. It’s about the employees. If they buy into the program, it can and will be successful. If employees don’t buy in, the program won’t go anywhere, no matter how much money, time and energy you put into it.

I talk about employee buy-in every day. I have also written about it in the past. How important is employee buy-in? Well, it really is the difference between the success or failure of any initiative. This is how important employee buy-in is:
When an employee buys into your mission, they become a force for driving your mission. When an employee doesn’t buy in, they are working against you and your mission.

This is what I wrote in a past article on the same topic. As the above statement shows, employee buy-in is not limited to wellness. Employees need to buy in to every initiative in their company in order for it to be successful. For that reason, I always recommend a vision as the first step in the process of setting up a wellness program. With a vision to identify with, employees can buy in.

As we have already discussed, employee buy-in is very important. That is why we focus on it when starting wellness programs. Employee buy-in is important enough to all areas of business and therefore, it is important enough for me to write about again. This time, let’s go beyond the concept of what buy-in brings to your program and get
into the details of how it actually works.

Employee buy-in is more than just a black and white issue. You can’t say that employees either buy in or they don’t. There is much more to the story in any company. There are going to be phases that you need to address in order to make sure that employee buy-in is on your side.

Introduction

The first phase is the introduction of your wellness programming. The vision that you have as a company is shared with employees. In this phase, they should be told what they can expect, why you are doing it. This helps employees understand what where you are coming from and gives you a chance to explain the importance of wellness with your company. The introduction phase will last a few months.

Engagement

The next phase is engagement. Employees are now getting involved in the programming. The first step in this process is asking for employee feedback, which can actually begin in the introduction phase as well. You want to get some input from employees on what they are dealing with, what some of their concerns are and what they want to learn more about. When it comes to their health, this is where you are able to establish the position of support and assure employees that it is their goals you are focused on. The engagement phase can actually be broken down into small parts, but the overall length should be 1-3 months.

Continuation

Once you introduce the program and get employees involved you are up and running. The rest is just keeping things going. The longer you keep a program going, the more chance you have to impact the health of your employees. That should be the main goal when getting started. It’s not about the first day. It is more about the status six months or a year down the line. The continuation phase, while it should be constant once the other two phases are done, will need to be evaluated to make sure that you don’t need to do another introduction or engagement as things change or you decide to add new ideas. A solid program that went through the first two stages can have a continuation phase lasting for years.

These three phases are the simplest way to look at the life of a wellness program. As you get started, get employees engaged and keep momentum going, there is buy-in taking place the entire time. Looking at wellness as a program with a life is a good start. The longer the life of a program, the more you can accomplish. Employee buy-in is happening during all three phases.

Employees will buy in based on the degree of their initial enthusiasm. This is where the goal of longevity becomes important. The longer your program is around, the more employees buy-in you will see.