Almost 70% of businesses offer wellness for their employees. Unfortunately, many employees aren’t using those wellness programs.
But despite their prevalence, employers still struggle to get employees to engage and utilize their benefits.
There are some key reasons why employers are struggling. From a lack of a communication strategy to not thinking about benefits the right way, employers are fumbling in many ways.
Programs Blur Together
Wellness programs that are lumped together are destined to fail.
Employees get overwhelmed when they hear about health initiatives and weight-loss challenges in the same breath.
When programs are lumped together, messaging can get confusing.
Separating your wellness programs into unique strategies allows you to communicate effectively and help employees feel less overwhelmed.
Wellness Portals
Many employers feel like their wellness program is ready to go just by offering a single website or portal for employees to check. While resource portals are helpful to consolidate information, they’re not motivating to use.
To have an effective wellness program, you need more than just an online portal with external resources.
Employees need to feel like their wellness programs are helping them change their habits. Passive use only when an employee needs to check something leaves a lot to be desired.
Benefits Aren’t Perks
Treating your wellness programs like a perk sends the wrong message.
When you talk to your employees about your offerings and talk about them like they’re one-off events instead of something that’s always available to them like health or dental benefits, they’re more likely to forget about them.
Your engagement strategy should be consistent and frequent. It helps remind employees what benefits are available to them.
Set And Forget
Finally, wellness programs are most likely to go unused when your rollout strategy is to just set it and forget it.
Programs where employers roll them out with a big bang and then forget about them until open enrollment are the least likely to succeed.
Dedicate a person or team to ongoing wellness efforts to ensure a program’s success. Simply offering a program isn’t enough.
Your employees aren’t using your wellness programsnot because they’re not well intentioned but because their implementation isn’t up to par.
A simple web portal or a quarterly email isn’t going to move the needle. Engage employees in unique and inspiring ways and they’ll respond in-kind.