You’ve put a lot of hard work into planning your wellbeing program – now it’s time to implement. Make the most of it by holding a launch – these can be annual. It’s a good excuse to bring everyone together, you’ll have the attention of senior management team and it’s one additional opportunity to reinforce your wellbeing message.
One of the things a lot of wellbeing programs fail to do (organisational ones) is they fail to take account of public initiatives.
One of the things we do and I think we do very well in our Wellbeing Program is we help you take advantage of what is going on in the public sphere. We are talking about things like: men’s health, Stress Down Day, Breast Cancer Awareness Day, Walk to Work Day.
There are so many of them. The important thing is that they are spread out over the year. This links nicely into our 12-month Wellbeing Calendar. For example, if we do have Stress Down Day or Stress Week or something similar, that is essentially where we put our stress management activities. This gives people the ability to look forward to different events that are linking into these public events that are going on anyway. We don’t want to re-create them, we want to go into some of these programs. All of the marketing, all of the flyers, a lot of the activities are already there in which they can participate in themselves outside of working hours to leverage and promote what we have put in place with our Wellbeing Program.
The other advantage of that is it helps you as an organisation to look like you’re on the ball with what is going on. It puts the wellbeing initiatives that you are running in a wider context and builds public awareness. It is a “free ride” as far as communication goes and it links the external.
OMG – The wellbeing program I put together for Great Ocean Road Health (GORH) “Self-Care for Health-Care” has been shortlisted for the 2022 Victorian Public Healthcare Awards.
Many years ago I worked as a reporter with ABC on a half-hour weekly current affairs program. I had an experience there that made me believe that enjoying your work was great for engagement and made me addicted to more
When I was young, I was given a life insurance policy by my father. He was a migrant to Australia and worked hard to put aside some money each month to pay for it. When I turned 18, he pulled me aside one day and handed it over to me – including the responsibility for maintaining it. I cashed it in of course – I have no recollection of what I spent the money on but it’s all gone. I don’t regret that as much as the fact I never thanked him for his efforts.
It’s a sad but true axiom: people don’t value what they get too easily. Or to put it another way – the more people invest in something – the more highly they regard it. (see Cialdini’s “The Psychology of Influence and Persuasion”). We’ve noticed that ourselves when we’ve been approached to run events for charities for free. We’re happy to do it but we often find our service is relegated to the back of the queue and ‘paid’ services are prioritised. So we now ask for a small fee – even a donation to a good cause just to ensure that our service is scheduled and actually runs.
In your workplace program, you might have noticed that when you book, for example, a masseur, yoga practitioner, or exercise class that initial interest is high but on the day many people drop out. They know that if they came they would get a lot out of it but other more pressing issues take precedence. In some cases, it’s fair enough – but it can result in empty slots, wasted money, and a devaluing of your wellbeing program.
One solution is to charge for the session. Charging forces people to commit and raise the importance (and value) of your event in the minds of participants. It doesn’t have to be a lot of money – a co-payment as small as $5 will do. If there’s a philosophical objection to charging you can always donate the funds to a good cause or re-invest it in your organisation’s social club or wellbeing program. Another way to increase attendance is to ensure that everyone signs onto an attendance schedule that is posted in a public place. Both of these will help.
Co-payments also send an unconscious message to your staff – looking after your wellbeing does have a cost associated with it – be it money or time or effort. You might try to minimise it but like all good things – you get out of it what you put into it. Your wellbeing is important enough to put effort into. Just keep the co-payments small enough not to exclude anyone.
If you are asking yourself this question you may have been approaching this program the hard way.
Most wellbeing programs start of as an idea. The CEO or HR manager decide that it’s time to implement a wellbeing program. They give the task to you…
So you’ve just been appointed to develop or re-develop your organisation’s wellbeing program. Congratulations. Everyone likes wellbeing programs – they’re all about health and wellness – it should be a breeze right?
You’ll create this program easily to the accolades of your boss and peers. Right? Or are you thinking – where do I start? What goes into it? Where can I find the time among all the other tasks I have?
We meet many, many staff who, while with good intentions, have never been given the tools or support. This is what this series is about – helping you create a great wellbeing program that will reflect well on you, improve the health of your colleagues and increase the productivity of your organisation.
Today we’ll tackle “Where do I start?”
The first question is…
The answer to this will shape the program. For instance if the reason is that there’s a problem with bullying then a wellbeing program will only help if you tackle the bullies and teach your staff assertive communication. If it’s stress then teach the staff resilience and tackle the stressors. What you don’t want to do is be in a position where you are being judged on issues you have no control over.
Answering this question will also help you determine what sort of resources you can expect. Will the program be home-grown or do you need external providers?
Where did the idea come from? Do you have top management support or will you have to get that. Grab a pen, single sheet of paper and go down to the coffee shop. Do a stakeholder matrix (15 minutes) then go through and identify all the blockers and drivers including the reasons people WON’T tell you about. This is your strategic research.
Now go out and talk to the people you will need support from. They don’t always need to be higher up the chain – you’ll also want the support of your end-users – the staff! Get your supporters on board and find out what you need to do to win over the others. Then do it.
Yep – wont’ take long. Spend 30 minutes setting some goals and a target date for launch/refresh. You can change them later –the important thing is to have some milestones.
In the next issue we’ll discuss how to decide what should go into the program – and how to get it the staff’s own.
At Workplace Wellbeing we specialise in helping you create and implement effective wellbeing programs – programs that are engaging, cost-effective and successful.
We have a range of templates and advice we can give you – and an initial consultation is free. Give us a call or email today.