08-17-2022
Wellness Culture It’s All About Engagement
The Rise of Employee Wellness Programs
There has been a surge of interest in employee wellness in the past few years, especially in being creative when choosing events that bring people together. Aside from the levity of happy hours, scavenger hunts, and escape room outings, engaging employees in a culture of well-being is serious business. Organizations certifying their healthy programming answer to measurable objectives for strategic planning, communication, and marketing, reporting and analysis, and more.
The Role of EcoVadis in Wellness Assessment
EcoVadis, a global sustainability assessor, rates companies in four categories, including Labor & Human Rights. Their health policy strives to “…make sure employees are able to find the right equilibrium between their work and their personal life.” The health pledge is timely. The question is, how do companies provide choices around how employees engage and measure their participation?
Importance of Choice in Wellness Programs
Choice is a great place to begin, considering that each person defines good health in their own way. It could manifest as fitness, emotional stability, physical/mental health, nutrition, or any number of categories that are part of wellness culture.
Utilizing Technology for Engagement
Google your choice of approaches, and there is bound to be an app to track individual and group engagement and progress toward wellness goals. Among the well-known interactive tracking programs are Peloton, Garmin, Strava, MapMyFitness, and Fitbit.
Xavier Creative House’s Commitment to Wellness
At Xavier Creative House this summer, our staff began using a workout app to track our fitness goals, activities, and achievements. The program’s social component allows us to encourage each other and set up group challenges to enhance engagement.
Monthly Fitness Challenges
Beginning in July, the team received a monthly fitness challenge with prizes and recognition for categories such as most variety in the choice of workouts, most minutes tracked for the month, or most consistent activity from someone new to join the group. We keep it interesting by switching things up and getting input from employee surveys.
Achievements in Employee Wellness
XCH formalized our commitment to well-being in 2020 by participating in the EcoVadis assessment. In our first year, we achieved silver status, scoring in the 91st percentile of advertising/market research firms globally. We refined our approach with automated tracking and by adding analytics, raising our score to the 99th percentile and gold status.
Elevating Wellness Initiatives
We boosted our wellness initiative with live programming from licensed fitness, meditation, mindfulness, and executive coaching professionals. Our efforts to elevate our commitment to health were recognized by the Philadelphia Business Journal when they named our agency as one of 2022’s Healthiest Employers among companies with 2-99 employees.
Encouraging Others to Prioritize Health
We encourage our network, no matter what size company, to prioritize employee health and apply for a corporate social responsibility (CSR) score.
References: https://www.livescience.com/best-fitness-tracker https://www.forbes.com/health/body/best-fitness-apps/
Categories: Wellness,