Healthy Culture is a Two-way Street

Many companies are trying to create a healthier workforce. At the same time, many employees are trying to create a healthier lifestyle for themselves. This is all happening simultaneously. Since workers are trying to be healthier and companies are trying to make their workers healthy, everyone should be healthy right?

If only it were that easy. There are many roadblocks to health for the average person. There is time, know-how and finding the right routine to name a few. These roadblocks are nothing when compared to the roadblocks created by a culture that doesn’t support health.

Employees are people and people want to be healthy. There is no reason for them to do anything else, so living healthy should be easy. Well, that is a common mistake made by many people as they try to make changes. The only thing that is easy is talking about health or thinking about making changes. T

Actually making those changes can be very difficult and usually takes a lot of dedication, time and support. The support is what I would like to focus on here. If everyone wants to live healthy, why don’t they succeed with ease? They need more support in order to do so.
Companies are finding this out the hard way. Many businesses are doing the right thing by focusing on employee health. They know that by creating programming, offering incentives and promoting healthy activities they will see positive changes in their workforce.

The benefits are numerous. There is health care costs and productivity to name a few. There are also benefits in the areas of attendance, morale, employee satisfaction and much more. Companies know they will see these benefits if they put programs in place.

The biggest problems occur when these programs are being put into place. They want a healthier workforce, so they encourage healthy activity. It makes perfect sense. If you do healthy things, you will see healthy results. That remains true, but corporate wellness is not that simple.

There are few things that make it more complicated

1. How do you know what they need to do in order to be healthy?
It is easy to roll out a smoking cessation program and make sure that everyone that smokes attends and participates actively. It is easy to promote it and get a good turn-out. Where does it become challenging? It becomes challenging when you realize that of the smokers on your staff, a small percentage wanted to or was ready to quit. This program had great intensions just as its participants did, but it was not the most timely or important area to focus on. Therefore the company that did this missed out on the results they wanted.

2. How do employees get their concerns communicated?
This is where the two-way street comes into play. Our last example showed a company moving forward without consulting employees. This led to a program that got less than desirable results. This wasn’t due to a bad program or lack of support. This result was due to lack of planning and communication.

When employees have a health concern, they need a place to communicate it. They need to be able to tell the company what will help them. This is important in order to not only get the right programming in place, but also to gauge success and make changes moving forward.
A wellness committee is the best way to do this. Establishing a group or employees to lead the initiative is the best way to make others feel comfortable enough to share their needs and voice their opinions.

For the company: Once they have this line of communication, the employees have to use it. Promotion, incentives and participation are all great, but they don’t mean anything if you are missing key health areas that people are trying to improve.

For the employee: Great programming and a supportive company means nothing if you are not able to focus on the areas that are important to you.

The bottom line is: employees need to voicing their concerns and telling their companies what they need. Health is not something that comes naturally. It is something we all want, but it takes work. Many companies get caught in the trap of giving employees what they think they should have. At the same time, many employees fall in to the trap of taking what the company thinks they should have.

I commend any company that takes action and focuses on wellness. I think it is a great step and many companies have seen great results from doing it. My point is not to chastise those that have tried to implement programming. My point is to remind companies to do it for employees rather than doing it to employees.

The only way to do this is to get feedback from employees. Let them tell you what they need and support them in those areas. Employees: tell your company what you need and use the tools as support. When you do this, you will be successful. The more successful employees are, the more successful their companies will be. This is true in all areas, including health.