Driving wellness culture in the workplace with a corporate intranet

Today, employee wellness is going trendy, to say the least. With already 70% of US employers offering a wellness program in 2015 (SHRM), the well-being element is expected to become integral to every employer’s benefits package in 2017. Surveys prove that investments in employee wellness pay off with the average 50% ROI (Forbes) and 61% of employees starting a healthier life (Aflac).

The problem is, even being aware of the advantages, HR departments of many companies get trapped in strict budgets for managing wellness, which usually leads to scattered efforts, low employee engagement and consequently limited positive outcomes. For such companies, getting on a wellness train in the first instance requires nurturing a wellness culture among employees, which is NOT necessarily linked with substantial investments in market-leading software and tools (like fitness bands). Instead, they can consider enhancing their corporate intranets to support their wellness programs by promoting healthy behaviors and corporate wellness benefits.

Based on a certain platform, such as SharePoint, an intranet is likely to already have all the necessary functionality. All it takes is starting to use it with wellness in mind. 

Keeping employees educated

The easiest way to start promoting wellness is to come up with a wellness-oriented part of the intranet with articles and videos educating about healthy behavior at work (like a quick workout for office workers, workplace ergonomics and nutrition tips). Yet content alone can hardly encourage employees to make a move. Alternatively, news buttons, news feeds, daily tips flowing to personal pages or as a daily wellness digest via email can help to grasp employees’ attention.

The content itself can be also automatically curated based on employees’ preferred content categories or job positions so as to avoid their frustration with getting irrelevant information. What’s more, every piece of wellness content suggested is an opportunity to remind about relevant reimbursements or inform about any changes to the corporate wellness policy.

Triggering healthy behaviors

To start developing healthy habits, employees can use the intranet to intuitively build personal well-being plans. Then timely reminders will keep them tuned to their targets on the way, and the history of accomplishments will help to make personal wellness efforts more transparent. As 91% of employees consider rewards a strong motivator for engaging in healthier behaviors (Welltok), an intranet can also include game-like achievements or badges to mark their victories.

While some employees would willingly share their progress, others should be given an option to keep their wellness progress to themselves with a chance to take part in an inter-department healthy marathon. For this, a total wellness engagement score can be automatically calculated for every department (for example, the total number of weekly trekking points or wellness events participated). This time, the winning team can get even more substantial rewards than digital congrats.

Apart from housing digital healthy marathons, a corporate intranet can assist in arranging and managing fitness challenges, which are highly engaging wellness activities with employee average participation of 34%, according to Forbes. For this, the agenda can be enriched with competitions and also seminars regarding well-being at work (for example, time management, stress management, healthy diets). Besides, after each event, employees can share their photos and feedback right on the intranet too.

Reaching more employees

While the above features target those who do care, how can a company also reach the employees with a limited interest in a healthy lifestyle? To be more persuasive, HR managers can use intranet-based surveys among wellness leaders and let facts motivate those lagging behind. For example, John and Mary can be more likely to engage in a corporate wellness program if they know that 80% of their colleagues have already seen a positive impact on their well-being, 60% of them have lowered their healthcare costs, and 40% have got more productive at work after participation in corporate wellness activities.

A quick survey can also help HR managers to pinpoint the reasons for poor participation (is it irrelevancy or the lack of time') and take appropriate actions.

Refining a corporate wellness program

To indeed nurture a wellness culture, a company can use an intranet to manage the health and well-being initiatives generated by the staff. According to Willis Towers Watson, 56% of employers survey the staff about the weaknesses of the corporate wellness program. With an intranet, a company can even go beyond automating the way they gather employee feedback to ignite well-being thinking with idea crowdsourcing. Like on LEGO Ideas, employees can be allowed to suggest and vote for wellness ideas at work. As employees actively contribute to the corporate health program, they become more engaged participants, and the company in its turn gets a healthier and more productive personnel.

On a final note

Tweaking a corporate intranet can become a good start in promoting wellness among employees. The outcomes will depend not only on how well custom features of the portal perform, but on how HR managers use them to nurture the culture of health and well-being bit by bit. Regular updates of content and events, incorporation of employees’ wellness ideas, timely rewards for achievements – such tasks should be left to the HR team.

Yet, with a proper technology in place, it won’t take much time to succeed in that.