How to Engage Employees in Wellness Programs - Proven Steps

You’ve launched a great wellness program, but participation is low, and enthusiasm is fading. Sounds familiar? 

Getting your employees genuinely excited about wellness takes more than sending out a memo—it requires thoughtful, personalized engagement. The wellness programs should feel accessible, tailored to individual employee needs, and rewarding to excite members.

This guide covers how to engage employees in wellness programs, including ensuring participation across the organization.

Let’s get started.

TL;DR - How to Engage Employees in Wellness Programs

Companies and HR teams must find ways to engage members to maximize the impact of their employee wellness initiatives. Can’t read the whole article right now? Here are the most effective ways to stimulate employee wellness engagement:

1. Customize the program
2. Secure leadership buy-in
3. Establish an enthusiastic wellness committee to champion initiatives
4. Incorporate games and challenges
5. Make participation easy
6. Offer meaningful incentives
7. Evaluate and adjust

Keep reading to learn how to leverage the strategies to drive real wellness impact for your organization.

How Do Employee Wellness Programs Help with Better Engagement?

A recent study reported that almost 60% of employees are quiet quitting, meaning most members are disengaged from their teams.

Employee wellness programs are among the most effective ways to stimulate employee engagement and keep them loyal to your organization, as discussed below: 

• Boosts Morale: Employee wellness programs help keep your team happy and make members feel valued, which boosts their morale and job satisfaction, keeping them loyal to your company.

• Improved Mental Health: Wellness initiatives help employees manage psychological distress, including burnout and emotional fatigue. The lower stress levels help members refocus and stay engaged at work, improving their productivity and performance.
• Positive Wellness Culture: Employee wellness programs help you create a positive organizational culture, which in turn creates a positive work environment where members communicate openly and collaborate to achieve company goals.
• Fosters Strong Workplace Connections: Wellness programs build camaraderie, creating a sense of community and belonging.
• Improved Productivity and Performance: Employee wellness programs help keep members physically fit and energized, reducing absenteeism from sick days and work-related injuries. Healthy employees also concentrate better, improving individual and company performance.

Key Components of an Effective Wellness Program for Employees

Usually, employee wellness programs differ from one company to another. Some companies may prioritize health and wellness, while others focus on mental health.

However, the best corporate health and wellness programs often have the same core elements, which include:

• Physical Fitness Initiatives: Encourage employees to seamlessly integrate fitness into their daily routines, keeping wellness accessible and enjoyable.
• Medical Screening: With lifestyle diseases becoming so prevalent in the 21st century, employee wellness programs should include quarterly or annual health assessments and medical workshops to educate teams on managing and preventing conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes. 
• Mental Health Services: A well-structured wellness program should provide counseling and employee support programs to help members deal with psychological issues such as stress, anxiety, and burnout. 
• Wellness Incentives: The programs should incorporate wellness gifts for employees to help members overcome psychological barriers like procrastination and get them excited to participate in the challenges. 
• Financial Literacy Training: Though often left out, wellness programs should include workshops on personal financial management to educate employees on wellness topics like debt repayment, setting up an emergency fund, and retirement planning.

How to Engage Employees in Wellness Programs - Proven Steps

Introducing corporate wellness programs doesn’t come with a guarantee of employee participation and engagement. In fact, employees often tend to ‘fight’ the initiatives just like they would other organizational changes.

As such, the HR team and wellness committee must have a strategy to get members excited and to drive participation.

Below are proven methods to achieve high enrollment and participation rates in your wellness programs.

1. Customize the Program

Conduct surveys, focus group interviews, and environmental audits to assess employee needs. You could then leverage these insights to personalize the wellness programs so they match employees’ lifestyle needs and support their wellness goals.

This ensures the programs are inclusive and members feel accommodated,  increasing participation rates.

1. Tailor Your Program

Personalize wellness initiatives based on genuine employee feedback, ensuring everyone feels seen and supported.

2. Secure Leadership Buy-In

The success and sustainability of any employee wellness program significantly depend on whether it has the blessing of top-level management.

Inspire your leadership team to actively champion wellness initiatives, setting a powerful example for the entire organization.

3. Create a Wellness Committee

Form an engaged wellness committee representing diverse departments, actively bridging communication between employees and leadership.

The committee should help promote the wellness initiatives as part of the change management strategy.

Also, they should communicate employees’ concerns about the wellness initiatives to HR and senior management to address the issues, maintaining high participation rates.

4. Incorporate Games and Challenges

Introduce fun, engaging wellness challenges like step tracking and team leaderboards to boost participation and foster healthy competition.

At SooHookd, we offer ready-made wellness challenges that are easy to join and are customizable to fit your company's vibe.

5. Make Participation Easy

Simplify enrollment—make it effortless for your team to access and participate in wellness activities anytime, anywhere. For example, you only need employee names and/or emails to enroll them in SoHookd wellness programs. 

Also, ensure the initiatives are readily accessible. The best way to achieve this is by availing the wellness programs online and ensuring they are mobile-friendly.

SoHookd webinars are available live and on-demand, so members can engage with them anytime, anywhere.

6. Offer Meaningful Incentives

Offer meaningful, personalized wellness incentives that genuinely excite your team and reinforce healthy behaviors. 

Part of our SoHookd ongoing support includes tracking employee participation rates and selecting members and teams that qualify for wellness rewards. Also, our wellness marketplace lets participants redeem wellness gifts instantly, which stimulates participation rates as members look to collect as many rewards as possible.

We recommend downloading our free ebook to learn how to leverage psychology-backed incentives to stimulate employee participation and drive meaningful results for your company.

7. Evaluate and Adjust

Continuously track key metrics like participation and satisfaction to refine your wellness programs, ensuring sustained engagement and impact.

Download our free Wellness Program Audit Checklist to help you know whether the initiatives are actually driving meaningful outcomes for your team.

You can then use the performance data for insights on refining the wellness programs to improve participation rates. 

How to Promote Employee Wellness Across the Organization

A common challenge many organizations face when implementing employee wellness programs is that the initiatives seem to impact only some members while locking out the rest.

As such, companies need a strategic approach to ensure they are employee wellness efforts are felt across the board.

Here's how to do it:

• Ask Top-Level Management to Set the Tone for Wellness: Employees often readily embrace initiatives championed by executives. As such, leaders should model healthy behaviors like taking breaks, enrolling in wellness challenges, and attending mental health sessions.
• Encourage Executives to Visibly Model Wellness Behaviors, Inspiring Employees to Enthusiastically Participate: Employees often readily embrace initiatives championed by executives. As such, leaders should model healthy behaviors like taking breaks, enrolling in wellness challenges, and attending mental health sessions.
• Establishing a Culture of Wellness: The HR department must play a vital role in introducing wellness to new employees from day one to help normalize it as part of the company culture.

For example, you should highlight the company's wellness benefits and commitment to helping members achieve work-life balance. This establishes a culture where wellness is seen as integral to the company's operations and not just optional.

• Develop Formal Policies: Collaborate with leadership to formalize wellness policies, empowering employees to confidently pursue their wellness goals.
• Recruit Managers as Wellness Advocates: Mid-level managers and supervisors directly impact employees' wellness in various ways, including task delegation and approving leave requests. As such, you could train the managers to recognize barriers to wellness, including burnout, stress, and anxiety. 

• Integrate Wellness into Everyday Operations: Integrate wellness into daily routines and department meetings, making it a natural and consistent part of your workplace culture. For example, all departments should include simple wellness activities in team meetings or host monthly wellness events.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) 

Let’s wind up by answering some FAQs about engaging employees in a wellness program.

What Are the Best Ways to Motivate Employees to Join Wellness Programs?

Below are the best ways to motivate employees to join wellness programs:

• Communicate the wellness program to employees, including how it benefits them.
• Simplify the enrollment process so it is easy to join the wellness programs and challenges.
• Provide wellness incentives to help employees overcome psychological barriers such as procrastination and create healthy competition among members.

How Can a Wellness Committee Increase Participation?

A wellness committee can increase participation by communicating the wellness programs’ expected benefits for employees. Also, they could act as a liaison between employees and top-level management, ensuring the proposed wellness program caters to members’ needs and preferences.

What Role Does Leadership Play in Employee Wellness Success?

Leadership plays an important role in employee wellness success, including:

• Act as role models and wellness champions, encouraging employees to participate in the initiatives.
• Allocate adequate resources to ensure the wellness program’s sustainability.
• Pass policies and regulations that support wellness initiatives such as remote or asynchronous working. 

How Often Should Wellness Programs Be Updated to Stay Relevant?

There’s no specific timeline on how often wellness programs should be updated to stay relevant. Some organizations update their wellness programs periodically (quarterly or annually). However, we recommend tracking program performance to evaluate effectiveness and for insights into how to improve or replace the wellness initiatives.

Conclusion

The best way to maximize your wellness programs’ effectiveness is by getting employees to enroll and participate in the initiatives. Make your wellness programs genuinely accessible and compelling—leverage meaningful incentives to encourage enthusiastic employee participation.

At SoHookd, we have nearly 10 years of experience providing flexible, customizable wellness programs that you can tailor to your employees’ lifestyle needs. Also, we are pioneers of (and currently only) a wellness-focused incentives marketplace that lets you offer gifts that reinforce healthy behaviors so they form your wellness culture.

Ready to boost employee engagement through wellness? Schedule your personalized demo today to see exactly how SoHookd can energize your team.