Addressing the wellbeing of your employees involves more than just healing and maintaining the physical body. While a virtual yoga class or full-service nutritious snack bar might help promote a few healthy habits, improving health outcomes and seeing a return on your wellness investment requires a strategically planned framework.
That’s why over half of all U.S. organizations offer corporate wellbeing programs for their employees.
Unfortunately, many traditional wellness programs fall short of achieving organizational goals by stifling access to resources, focusing too much on physical health, and failing to meet employees where they truly are.
By contrast, holistic strategies take a multifaceted approach to wellness, going beyond exercise and nutrition to provide resources and activities that employees can take advantage of any time, anywhere. Not only do holistic wellness programs cater to all dimensions of health, but they also give organizations the freedom to customize each program experience so employees can engage however they please.
In this guide, we’ll cover all there is to know about the power of holistic wellness programming, from the six essential wellness pillars to strategies employers can use to effectively optimize their programming for results.
What Is a Holistic Wellness Program?
In contrast to traditional, one-dimensional wellness programming that solely focuses on physical health outcomes, holistic wellness programs allow organizations to promote wellness in all aspects of their employees’ lives. These programs recognize how different dimensions of health affect one another, and they aim to address each one with targeted activities, incentives, and resources that meet employees exactly where they are.
But what are these essential elements for overall health and wellbeing?
The 6 Pillars of Holistic Wellbeing
When most people think of achieving optimal health, they might imagine eating right or being physically active. In doing so, however, other facets of wellbeing fall to the wayside—including mental and emotional health, social wellness, and more.
With stress, anxiety, and burnout being the top challenges plaguing workforces, each employee requires the right amount of support to manage all aspects of their wellbeing. To understand the full picture, here are the six essential pillars everyone must maintain:
1. Physical Wellbeing
Physical health has long been the first thing people think of concerning wellness, and it’s also the most common factor companies prioritize in their corporate wellness strategies.
Outside of regular exercise and nutrition, organizations have begun to place a heightened focus on additional healthy habits like sleep due to its profound impact on workplace productivity. A survey from Glassdoor found that nearly 75% of employees get less than seven hours of sleep on work nights, largely due to blurred lines between work and home life.
Optimizing work structures with holistic wellness in mind not only enables employees to achieve a better work-life balance, but also sets them up to receive adequate sleep each night, which can improve eating habits, morale, and productivity during the work day.
2. Mental Health and Emotional Wellbeing
According to McKinsey, nearly 60% of employees report facing mental health challenges on a daily basis, significantly impacting their performance at work.
In the same study, McKinsey also found that employees who do not have enough mental and emotional health support at work are twice as likely to report low engagement, four times more likely to leave, and are less inclined to socially connect with colleagues.
As mental health and social wellness continue to affect one another in the workplace, employers can expand programming to not only focus on mindfulness, psychological safety, and emotional intelligence, but incorporate ways for employees to check in and connect with one another authentically.
3. Occupational Wellbeing
Employee experience can make or break any solid wellness strategy. For example, employees who don't have enough mental health support at work are three times more likely to report low job satisfaction and leave, per McKinsey.
Fortunately, this is one area where employers have direct control with personalized benefit offerings that meet employees where they are. Tracking engagement and utilization of benefits within a corporate wellness platform allows employers to see in real time which benefits are resonating with employees, as well as which are falling short. It's also a great arena for employees to leave feedback about any job-related challenges that require structural adjustments.
4. Social Wellbeing
Despite its vital importance, social wellness is an often overlooked piece of the holistic wellness puzzle—particularly in hybrid workforces where face-to-face interaction is limited or nonexistent.
As Harvard Business Review reports, those who have a strong sense of community at work are nearly 60% more likely to thrive and stay at their current jobs compared to those who do not. Organizations that create opportunities for employees to connect not only see improvements in company culture and team-building, but also in retention rates as well.
A wellness platform can be an effective digital front door for social interaction, especially among teams who only collaborate virtually. Hosting team challenges, opening messaging channels for shout-outs, and promoting company events and outings are great places to start to fill employees' social cups throughout the year.
5. Financial Wellbeing
PwC reports that personal finances are currently the top cause of stress for over half of all employees. This number skyrockets among younger generations of the workforce, who require benefits that go beyond retirement savings and compensation adjustments.
Financial worries often bleed into other aspects of employees' lives, with over half feeling a cascading negative effect on sleep habits, mental health, and self-esteem.
While employers don't have control over global economic circumstances, benefits like financial coaching, flexible spending accounts, savings programs, and student loan assistance can meet employees halfway to ease financial stress. These offerings go a long way in easing financial anxiety and giving employees the knowledge they need to own their financial situations.
6. Purpose
The final pillar of holistic wellbeing is perhaps one of the most critical in improving wellbeing from the inside out.
When employees are overworked and aren't told where and how to find information about their benefits, it can become easy to lose motivation, both personally and professionally. As a result, other key elements of employee wellbeing—including physical, mental, and financial health—suffer and deteriorate over time.
Having a larger company mission employees can get behind is one place to start, but promoting that mission across the organization through a wellness program can help drive this home. For example, opening sign-ups for pre-selected volunteering activities (or allowing employees to choose one of their own) is an engaging way to instill a sense of purpose and demonstrate organizational values to employees.
Why Take a Holistic Approach to Workplace Wellbeing?
When employees are affected by health issues—such as depression, chronic pain, or work-related stress—it heavily impacts their performance, engagement, and satisfaction with their work. Not only are they less inclined to reach their goals and thrive in their careers, but they're also less likely to utilize benefits that could mitigate their symptoms, costing organizations billions of dollars a year.
Wellness programs that touch every area of wellbeing are the secret weapons in addressing these diverse workplace problems with accessible resources that:
- Enhance workplace culture: Corporate wellness programs that include fun, personalized, and team-centric activities have been shown to boost employee satisfaction by 67%.
- Inspire engagement: Prioritizing healing and wellbeing from all angles—rather than just focusing on physical fitness or nutrition—can reduce absenteeism and turnover by 50%.
- Boost productivity: Organizations report a 66% increase in productivity after implementing holistic wellness programs that address individual wellness needs.
So how can companies leverage holistic wellness in the workplace to empower their employees?
What Does Holistic Health and Wellbeing Look Like in the Workplace?
Holistic wellness programs provide organizations with a seamless, dynamic, and data-driven way to address the physical, mental, financial, social, occupational, and purposeful needs of employees.
Rather than adopting rigid, cookie-cutter programming with benefits that solely focus on one area of wellness, a holistic strategy considers all aspects of an employee’s life and offers personalized activities for long-lasting behavior change.
Let’s take a look at a few different ways holistic programs can revamp an organization's wellness strategy and produce exceptional results:
Exercise the Body and Mind
Employers have been incorporating nutritional challenges and exercise games as part of their wellness programs for decades. To take things one step further, it's now imperative to think about how to modify physical wellness program elements to also target other areas of wellbeing, like mental, social, and occupational health.
Numerous studies have shown exercise to reduce symptoms of stress, depression, and anxiety, and stepping away from the desk can drastically improve mental clarity and focus. In addition, getting teams together for a bit of leisure time can also build connections that translate to better collaboration, improving social wellness and belonging.
Make Psychological Safety the Name of the Game
Employees feel most encouraged to engage and take advantage of benefits when they work for companies that help them feel safe, heard, and respected. As a result, creating a psychologically safe workplace gives employees the confidence and reassurance they need to utilize the mental health benefits at their disposal.
Additionally, many companies find mindfulness and emotional intelligence training to be increasingly helpful in promoting psychological safety from the top-down. That way, leaders and managers are equipped with the knowledge they need to help employees prosper, no matter their situation.
Bring Workforces Together
While many companies still opt for hybrid work structures, the social component of work has never gone away—in fact, it's more important than ever.
Mapping out opportunities throughout the calendar year for group and peer-to-peer activities is a proactive way to ensure employees can form meaningful bonds with their teams. Nothing drives wellness program engagement like a group challenge, and giving employees the chance to motivate and encourage one another builds team camaraderie and keeps everyone coming back for more.
Find Opportunities for Career Advancement
Without any opportunities to grow and find purpose in their careers, employees can easily become unmotivated and disengaged. And with 59% of millennial workers saying that learning and development opportunities are integral in choosing a job, it's clear that employees highly prefer companies that help them find meaning and fulfillment in their work.
By establishing clear outlines for advancement and integrating high-quality educational courses into a digital wellness program, companies can enable employees to rediscover their true purpose and reach their goals. This will not only allow them to explore their potential and grow professionally, but it can also build loyalty and help them retain long-term knowledge, experience, and expertise in an otherwise competitive job market.
Go All-In on Targeted Financial Wellness Programming
Not every employer has the luxury of increasing compensation at whim, but extra cash doesn’t solve every issue. Instead, many organizations are reviewing, expanding, and modernizing their financial benefits to meet all employees where they are, whether it's through money management courses, cash incentives for wellness activity participation, or flexible spending accounts.
While it's impossible to change global economic factors that impact employee wellbeing, personalizing wellness programming to ease financial anxiety and provide financial education goes a long way. By equipping employees with the coping skills and knowledge they need to own their finances, they can gradually establish healthy financial futures for years to come.
Empower Employee Growth and Engagement Through Holistic Wellbeing
Happy, healthy employees are good for business. But employee health is no longer one-dimensional—so why should your wellness program be any different?
To effectively meet employees where they are, organizations must address each area of wellbeing equally and regularly. Doing so ensures employees are set up to thrive and be the best version of themselves.
Is your wellness program set up to address all of your employees' wellbeing needs? Whether you're looking for program modifications or a place to start, WellRight is here to help.
