Corporate Wellness Programs

Corporate Wellness Programs

Getting the teams to work at full potential is the dream every CEO or leader in corporate world has, yet it is illusive to achieve it. Human capital needs to be nurtured and trained over a period of time in a culture conducive to encourage them to perform at full potential. In a study by Mind Celebrations spread over 18 months and 4000 employees working in corporate world in India throws up interesting facts.

Corporate Wellness Program

While organizations focus on developing Functional competencies, building positive Mental Health at work place is missed out by most. In last decade organizations have started to focus on well being of Human Capital but most of the initiative is restricted to Lifestyle based wellness and providing ecosystem for teams to build their physical health. Such initiatives taken by organizations are termed as Corporate Wellness Programs.

As defined by Harvard Business Review, Workplace Wellness is – an organized, employer sponsored program that is designed to support employees (and, sometimes their families) as they adapt & sustain behaviors that reduce health risks, improve quality of life, enhance personal effectiveness, and benefit the organizations bottom-line.

Corporate wellness training programs are a conscious choice of enhancing wellbeing within an organization, aimed to be a catalyst for a holistic welfare of the employees along with achieving business outcomes. It comes from a fundamental understanding that any thing that puts us in lack of ease is disease and what brings us to a sense of ease is wellness.

Benefits of corporate wellness program are:

For Employees

1. Feel nurtured and taken care of
2. Feeling of belongingness and morale is higher
3. Healthier Life
4. Work life harmony
5. High performance and productivity

For Organizations

1. Reduced absenteeism on account of sick leaves
2. When present at work employees are more focused and productive
3. Achievement of business goals
4. Attract and retain talent
5. Lower’s the cost of attrition (vacancy, hiring & retraining)

A corporate wellness program should be 360^O, which includes holistic elements of work and life along with flexibility of a constantly changing & complex business environment.

Elements of Corporate Wellness Program or Corporate Wellness Ideas

1. Psychological wellness: The experience of employees to feel psychologically safe to express themselves without the fear of being punished marginalized or humiliated
2. Social wellness: How employees interact and connect with others including their family and the trust they feel in relationships along with their ability to nurture the relationship without despair
3. Physical wellness: The ability to have a healthy life without undue fatigue. Recognizing behaviors that are non-conducive to health. Eating healthy food with a minimum of seven hours of sleep and exercise of four times a week is integral.
4. Emotional wellness: Understanding emotions and the ability to manage them is essential to personal performance. Employees emotions are contagious and managing emotions important for team performance too.
5. Mental wellness: The ability to manage human focus without the compulsive need for digital distraction, it has direct impact on productivity and achieving strategic objectives at work.
6. Creative wellness: The ability to challenge the status quo, be open to newer ways of doing things is integral to ones learning and evolution and also enables employees search the best possible solution to challenges at work.
7. Spiritual wellness: Human happiness is connected to investing time in doing things that make them happy and perusing hobbies and being peaceful. It is also the ability to live a life in congruence with our personal values.
8. Financial wellness: Employees’ relationship with money and the ability to manage these resources. When they achieve their financial goals and save for a future to live their dreams has a direct impact on life satisfaction.
9. Environmental wellness: Is the ability to recognize individual responsibility for the air quality, saving water, growing trees, making a positive impact on the environment outside us and inside us. The only resources that last are the ones we renew.

Should you focus on ROI (Return on Investment) or VOI (Value on Investment)

Corporate Wellness

According to Gallop, around 85% of employers in America has some type of Corporate wellness training or program happening. In early years of introduction of concept of Corporate wellness programs, most of the focus has been to measure the ROI of programs by understanding the two indexes –

1. Personal Lifestyle Wellness Program
2. Disease Management Program

The evaluation matrix has been driven by how much money is saved in terms of insurance outflows on employee health, absenteeism due to diseases versus the money spent on these programs.

To assess the true value of such programs, organizations need to deploy holistic measures including impact on –

1. Employee Attrition
2. Customer Satisfaction (Customer Satisfaction us directly proportional to Employee Satisfaction)
3. Increased profitability
4. Lesser loss due to absenteeism and presentism (unproductive even if reported to work specially under negative mental health symptom)
5. Lesser safety incidents at work
6. Better Quality production or service delivery
7. Impact on employer branding to attract & retain talent

Corporate wellness programs the Mind Celebration way

We help organizations customize and develop their Wellness Initiatives using the following principles,

1. A preventive & proactive approach
2. We believe what gets measured gets done

• we audit current levels of each element of all employees across all levels
• we audit the culture and ecosystem provided to build holistic wellness
• we enable daily steps to wellness that an employee embarks upon with his ability to earn wellness currency as reward and loose currency if daily steps are missed

1. We believe leaders are kingpins in this journey of support to holistic wellness and hence we coach leaders to facilitate for emotional safety within teams
2. We ensure the elements of fun (build in daily rituals to follow) are included in our corporate wellness programs to ensure that practices are implemented in daily life.

For us corporate wellness is part of organizational culture and the ecosystem and investing in it a strategic decision along with happiness and engagement of employees.

Authors are co-founders of Mind Celebrations – first preventive Mental Healthcare initiative for organizations and employees. For more details visit www.mindcelebrations.com.