Top 3 reasons why employee wellness initiatives fail
People often ask what they can do to have a successful wellness program and prove a return on investment from it — we get asked this question a lot. It depends on whether it is supported by top management, whether it is communicated appropriately throughout the company, whether mid-level management and other employees understand their role and benefits, the method through which people participate to get benefits and in most cases, budget. Without these key elements, any initiative, especially in the regimes of change management is headed towards turbulent waters.
Let’s define wellness first — Dictionary.com defines wellness as “the quality or state of being healthy in body and mind, especially as the result of deliberate effort.” What this means is that corporate wellness initiatives are not just health insurance policies, eating right and encouraging active lifestyles but also involves taking care of the mind at work, or mental health and emotional wellness. Yes, items such as HR surveys, organizational culture, peer-to-peer support groups, etc. are all part of corporate wellness and are extremely important parts of corporate wellness. For example, research performed by doctors Jeffrey Kahn and Alan Langlieb, in their book, Mental Health and Productivity in the Workplace: A Handbook for Organizations and Clinicians shows that people with symptoms of depression have a fivefold or greater increase in time lost from work compared to those without symptoms of depression. Dr. Jennifer S Lerner et al., in their paper, The Financial Cost of Sadness, report “Experiments combining methods from psychology and economics, revealed that sadder is not necessarily wiser when it comes to financial choices. Instead, sadness — but not disgust — made people more myopic, and therefore willing to forego greater future gains for instant gratification.” While these examples may not have aha conclusions it is evident that mental health should be an important aspect of corporate wellness initiatives.
Typically, for wellness initiatives top management support and budget go hand-in-hand. If supported from the top, budget is normally not a problem. For wellness initiatives neither of these are issues as the results speak for themselves. Dr. Goetzel in, The do’s and don’ts of workplace health and well being programs: Why building a culture of health is a true differentiator for Virgin Pulse, showcases this difference in cumulative stock performance between the S&P500 and the winners of the Everett Koop National Health Awards. (The C. Everett Koop National Health Awards recognize outstanding worksite health promotion and improvement programs, thehealthproject.com)
Clearly, companies who take care of their employees are taken care of in the stock exchange. So, in ways more than one, the actual question becomes, what best steps ensure that programs achieve the desired impact inside and outside the company?
Assuming that top management is unified and that budget required per employee is not large then the success of the program depends mostly on the how well the initiative goals are aligned with those of its participants, how well the benefits are communicated with the company’s mid-level managers and other employees and the method through which people participate to gain benefits. Without adequate support from middle management and acceptance from employees, corporate initiatives miss the mark. Let’s dive a little deeper into the 3 top reasons why employee wellness initiatives fail.
1) Misalignment of participant objectives with initiative goals
Volumes have been written on the topic of alignment of goals. It is also a crucial part of any Strategy course, yet most programs miss this by a mile. Viewing each principle-agent relationship and minimizing any conflicts of interest are important. In a 360 degree feedback report, what does one have to gain by being truthful about one’s manager? E.g.: All of us have had/known abusive bosses — if you had an abusive boss, would you tell him/her that they were abusive, that your mental health and that of rest of the team and the manager would be better if he/she were less abusive and, that meditation may help decrease the behavior? No, I don’t think so. When you think about it, a 360 degree feedback is designed (and marketed) to provide feedback to all parts of the web, especially upstream, so that teams function better and that extreme behaviors are minimized. But, it simply can’t because the program does not align the objectives of all participants. Furthermore, knowing that our next year’s salary increments and promotions depend on our boss, would any of us err on the side of providing stern or controversial feedback? No, I don’t think so. These examples show how even well adopted programs such as the 360 degree feedback fail to generate any return due to misalignment.
2) Communicating value/benefits to all stakeholders
Once again, tomes have been written, Ted Talks have been applauded to and still, most programs sorely miss the communication angle. A substantial portion of each company’s budget is marketing and business development. Yet even after knowing that a healthier employee leads to a healthier bottom line, and that employees are a critical constituency, there is no budget or personnel allocated towards marketing internal company initiatives. Forget complicated ‘change-management’ examples — does your company even inform you that your health insurance provider has changed, why it has changed and how you benefit?
Importance of internal policy/initiative marketing and storytelling could not be explained better than by BusinessPulse in 6 Communication pitfalls that stall innovation. “All too often new initiatives are met with employee skepticism and cynicism. Unless employees see a project’s potential in terms of solving company issues, they won’t commit to the project and do what’s necessary to make it a success. Unless a company brings the future state to life by telling stories and creating experiences that help employees recognize the personal benefits of the project, their performance will be lackluster.”
3) Method through which people participate to gain benefits
Imagine that you are not a runner and love your morning sleep, and your New Year’s resolution was to run two miles every morning. Now, would you force yourself to wake up early and run two miles the very first day? If you did so, how long do you think you would run the second day, through all the body aches and tired days? Be realistic… Most of us would not even wake up early the second day.
Behavioral psychologists have proposed numerous theories and number of days before something became a habit. Some of the latest research at Stanford by Dr. B J Fogg theorizes that numerous small baby steps are required to become habits, Tiny Habits, before we finally achieve or create and sustain our new desired habit. While this sounds intuitive, most initiatives miss the mark on this one. Any major initiative changes the culture of your entire company and to achieve sustainable change one must ease into it with baby steps. While this may seem to be a waste of time it reaps rewards in the long run. Another thing to keep in mind is that your rollout plan should enable the bulk of your company form its new habits through positive reinforcement loops. Systems thinking and loops are independent topics that I’ll address later.
It makes sense to talk about ROI only when these factors are considered and implemented wisely. It will result in a sufficiently high level of middle management support and employee acceptance. The next best situation to be is when the employees love the initiative but not middle management. Re-examine the initiative and make minor tweaks and/or tailor your messaging to middle management and their benefits. The worst situation to be in is when middle (and top) management love it but the employees don’t. The initiative is off to a bad start then you are better off scrapping the whole thing than bringing in external consultants to ‘fix’ things. If you have one takeaway after getting all the way here this would be it — if your employees don’t like an initiative please don’t bring in an external consultant.
If everything is going well and your corporate wellness initiative is going more-or-less to plan, it may still not be easy to attribute an increased bottom line or show a contribution to one as a result of your program. If measurable indicators are not chosen at the beginning of the initiative look for other tangibles such as increased stock price, program participation rates, reduced employee turnover, social media and 3rd party ratings, reduced cost of attracting talent, increased quality of applications, increased cash turnover, increase or decrease in emails/communication sent outside regular work hours with sentiment analysis of the same, lowered theft, lowered malfeasance numbers, etc. and intangibles such as behavior changes, employee morale, increased activity with co-workers outside the workplace, etc.
So, how are your wellness initiatives doing? Are they on track?
