Fran Keane, Vice President of Human Resources for CentraState Healthcare Systems, shares with Human Resources IQ the five critical ingredients to a successful employee wellness program.
1. You Gotta Have a Plan: Transformation starts with an idea; however, change occurs with a well thought out strategy. Create a wellness strategy that aligns with your mission, empowers your implementation team and drives wellness results.
2. Realistic Measures for Success: Take time to define and establish measurable goals that are relevant to your workforce issues. Limited resources make it impossible to be all things to all employees all the time. Identify key health status opportunities that will have the greatest impact.
3. C-Suite Support: With your plan and success measures in hand your executive team will need to be on board. You will need to build a strong business case for wellness improvement: How will your wellness plan provide value-added results?
4. Maximize Your Partnerships: To launch a successful wellness initiative, you should capitalize on your current partnerships–internally and externally.
5. Employee Buy-in: You have your plan, C-Suite is on-board and you are ready to launch. Now comes the hard part–changing employee behavior. Will your strategy be all rewards (the carrots)? Will there be disincentives (the sticks)? How will you communicate the plan, the opportunities and the successes? Culture can significantly impact strategy, so communication is very important. Anticipate the concerns, questions and anxiety, and address them up front. You can never over-communicate a new initiative.
