The WellRight Blog

Motivation. We all want more of it, but few of us can seem to find enough of it. And when we do find that burst of enthusiasm, how often do we use it to improve our health and well-being?

Odds are, you’re not the only one having trouble putting yourself first and taking steps to improve your health; your employees are, too. But imagine what could happen if you could change that—if you could boost motivation among your entire staff, energizing them to take action toward improving their well-being?

“You think you’re busy—just wait until you have kids!”

As irritating as this pronouncement can be to those without children, there is a certain grain of truth in it. Having children really does add a hectic new dimension to life.

But, there’s work to be done. And so, new parents must find a way to balance the demands of their job with the demands of their tiny, toothless new overlords. What role can their employer play? How can the company culture support new parents and set up a win-win situation for everybody?

The term “carrot and stick” comes from farmers dangling a carrot in front of animals to encourage them to make forward progress. But while farmers rarely let the hard-working animals get the carrot, today’s employers know better.

Instead, they understand that to encourage positive change—like participation in biometric screening—they need to offer the “carrots” employees can actually earn and enjoy.

Wellness is more than a single blood pressure reading or the number of miles we logged last week on our Fitbit. Instead, wellness is a complex connection of systems, with each one affecting the next.

Because of this, companies who take a siloed approach to employee wellness, focusing solely on nutrition or fitness, do themselves—and their employees—a huge disservice.

But imagine what could be accomplished when an employer helps their employees not just eat well and better manage health conditions, but also plan for retirement or college, teach stress management and coping strategies, and develop social groups to keep employees feeling connected.

Impact. Selflessness. Courage. Responsibility.

When Netflix wrote and published the 126-slide deck “Netflix Culture,” it used these words, among others, to clearly describe to employees the behaviors and attributes the company deemed important for success.

Many other companies don’t put anywhere near that amount of thought into their culture … if they put any thought into it at all.

But optimizing your company culture can be one of the most powerful ways to improve not just the wellness of your employees, but the wellness of your company as a whole. 

Employee engagement is a term that all managers will hear (and use) at some point in their careers. After all, what manager wouldn’t want their employees to be engaged in their work? But beyond that superficial appeal, employee engagement can be the key to your company’s success.

What is employee engagement, really? Why is it so important? And above all, how can managers spark deep engagement in their own teams?

As a wholesale food distributor with clients ranging from local restaurants to nationwide chains like Subway, Utah-based Nicholas and Company knows a little something about what fuels the human body.

So, it’s no surprise they established a wellness program several years ago, focusing on physical health. It started simply, with a yearly biometrics program and grew slowly, eventually adding a health coach who would analyze test results and help employees set basic goals.

Would the program keep up with their growth, though?

Today, company culture is about more than just a stable place to work, where you can retire after 25 years with a pin and a luncheon. It’s about finding a company that lifts you up with shared values and priorities, and a sense of community.

This shift in the workplace landscape has led many human resource managers to identify culture and engagement as their number one challenge in staying competitive.

As employers look to develop and strengthen their corporate culture, they’re listening to what employees have to say. Nearly 77% of employees agree that wellness programs can positively affect corporate culture, especially when employers pair the program with genuine care and concern for employees.

A Minnesota-based manufacturing company faced a common problem: The company had a wellness program, but its employees weren’t engaging with it. To make matters worse, these employees were a predominantly rural, older, male group—a notoriously tough nut to crack.

So, the company decided to get creative. Rather than try to force the employees to adapt to the wellness program, the company decided to adapt the program to the employees. The organizers focused their program around what they knew their employees were interested in: deer hunting. And the “Buck Fever” wellness challenge was born.

Those heavily loaded gift cards don’t always drive the most participation.

We had a wellness challenge that invited our employees to build a new habit over a 30-day period. If the company as a whole did their new habits 75% of the time, the reward was that I (the CEO) would shave my head and grow a goatee to match the look of two of our software developers. Our team succeeded, and we gathered in the lunchroom where one of the bald, goatee bearing software developers shaved my head in front of the entire company. It was priceless.