CHANGING EMPLOYEE BEHAVIOR: THE KEY TO EFFECTIVE CORPORATE

WELLNESS & A RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT

Companies have always strived to provide a work culture that allows the employee a
chance to receive a competitive income in exchange for their service. Over the years, a
variety of corporate “feel-good” programs have been used to demonstrate how valuable
an employee is to their existence. And, over the years, many of these programs have
been disguised as wellness.

Unfortunately, wellness has largely become a misunderstood and ineffective service,

resulting in a hard to quantify ROI. Ineffective because wellness is commonly offered
as an employee benefit where human resources are often charged with overseeing the
delivery of this service. Onsite massage, pedometers or health fairs provide the illusion
that the company is concerned with their employee’s health, but these efforts fail in
providing a substantial return on investment. Whether it’s an employee benefit or a feel-
good program, the bottom-line is wellness doesn’t work when facilitated by departments
who are unfamiliar with how to change behavior or how to achieve a ROI.

Nationally, only 22% of a typical workforce participates in wellness programs and many
of these participants are the “walking well.” To have value, a wellness program should
involve 100% of the employee population, including spouses and dependents. If a
company is attempting to mitigate their health insurance premiums via wellness, then
every beneficiary needs to become involved. Even though spouses and dependents
are not employed by the company, they may be covered under the company’s health
plan and would have equal access to medical benefits. Their health would also play a
role in insurance rates; therefore, wellness needs to extend to all covered lives.

Furthermore, about 20% of these wellness programs turn-over at the end of the year, so
employees perceive that changing behavior toward wellness is not truly a target
objective by the company. If a company wants to see true ROI from wellness, then the
program must incorporate a company-centric directive and come from the “top-down,”
rather than from “bottom-up.”

THE KEY TO EFFECTIVE CORPORATE WELLNESS: CORPORATE CULTURE

To uncover the key to effective corporate wellness, let’s first define what it is that we are
attempting to achieve with wellness. Simply, an unhealthy employee costs money.
Thus, wellness should move those covered lives who are unhealthy toward behaviors of
good health.

To change an unhealthy employee into a more productive and healthier one, requires
them to change old behaviors. The question is, what behavior change mechanisms can
a company promote that are successful at effective, long-term change?
Given that one’s behavior is influenced by their environment and those around them, a
work environment has tremendous opportunity to advocate good health. The key is to
change the corporate environment which supports healthier behaviors, so that their
employees think about wellness. In other words, if a work culture becomes the
intentional agent of wellness, then the thoughts about the corporate health structure
affect employee behavior. One can’t have a behavior without a thought. Therefore, by
changing the work culture to incorporate healthier messages, i.e., cleaner facility,
brighter colors, water fountain, walking track, seat-belt policy, and so forth, an employee
will act out or behave in accordance to whatever corporate culture exists. If the
company has openly eliminated smoking from its campus, what behavior will a current
smoker have to make?

To change behavior, you have to change the way one thinks about their behavior. And,
this can be accomplished when a company purposely aligns the corporate environment
to include positive rather than negative messages. Like a coach, the company needs to
define what good health looks and feels like. Instead of weight loss classes, the
company should investigate how their culture impacts the day-to-day decisions and
behaviors. Is the work environment set-up to support unhealthy decisions and
unhealthy behaviors? For example, how often are your employees eating high fat, high
sugar foods? What kinds of items are available in the vending machines or cafeteria?
To put this in blunt terms, if your boss was morbidly obese and appeared to not practice
good health behaviors, why would you?

The point is, wellness should be a business strategy, because unhealthy employees
cost for being absent more, negatively influence production, cost more in medical
treatments, and cost more in worker’s compensation claims.

To effectively receive a ROI from wellness, change the culture at work. For more
information, contact Scott Setterlund at (208) 921-8659.