Why bother? It’s a good question, which is always lurking around when we are facing situations for making a choice. How does this associate with corporate well-being programs? Well, based on over 20 years of experience, I dare to say – in many ways. Let’s take an imaginary example. As a responsible company you have decided to start a wellness program for employees, which aims not only to get people activated with their own health and well-being, but also to show that your company really cares about people. Beautiful and worthy I would say. So, cameras, description, action!
The carefully designed and high-quality wellness program is ready to go. Fifteen out of hundred of employees show interest and seven of them participates. Five of them takes the program to the end. How did this happen? Not again. Always the same thing!
Value roulette
Why bother? Yes, this same question comes to employees’ mind when they get informed about the offered well-being program, which competes with all the other things going on in people’s life at the same moment: preparation for customer meeting, writing a report which is already late, wife’s birthday, children’s hobbies and so on. It’s all about prioritization and time management, which eventually is based on values. From this aspect, the most important customer for well-being programs is the employee as an individual, not the company itself. The most important customers are Benjamin, Julia, Peter, Lisa and all the rest of the employees. If they don’t value the offered program high enough in their life, they don’t buy it and then all the effort is wasted.
Individually tailored and right timing
There is no standard One size fits all solution for employee wellness. Every individual is different: with the different kind of life situation, needs and wishes related to experienced well-being and so on. Harvard Business Review recently published an article called: ”Why People Do – and Do not Participate in Wellness Programs”. The article shed light on the factors, which are significantly affecting when the company is organizing employee well-being programs. In USA 465 employees who involved in the health and wellness programs, responded to the survey, which purpose was to find out which factors most influenced the choice of to the participation. Nearly 75% of respondents were saying that the most important criterion are the following:
1) Individually tailored content
2) The opportunity to participate when needed
3) Skilled coaching, one-to-one
After reading article I felt pure joy. At Movendos our health and wellness coaching concept is based on exactly those three important components. We aim to bring professional individual health and wellness coaching available when and where it’s needed the most.
The blog was written by Petteri Paakkunainen, the head of Coaching services & Business development
