Why a one size fits all solution doesn’t really work in employee wellbeing

Not many people know this but I’ve actually been involved in corporate wellbeing for longer than I’ve been involved in employee benefits and employee engagement.

The BBC, British Airways, Symantec, BT were all companies that we ran wellness programmes for back in the 90’s. We worked for some really great innovative companies there. My two friends ran the gyms and I developed employee communications around the gyms and various programmes that they offered.

One of my earliest “communications disaster” moments was when a member of BBC staff reported me personally to the corporation’s HR director because she thought that an email blast I’d sent out to 20,000 BBC employees advertising the new BBC Weight Management initiative had been targeted specifically at her.

My use of email personalisation, which was innovative back then in the late 1990’s, made her think that I was calling her obese. It took me some time to dig myself out of that hole and I never sent another “single issue” email blast ever again!

After that I also built the brand and launch marketing for a chain of premium health clubs and worked with LA Fitness on a (failed) attempt to launch a standalone chain of weight loss centres outside of their core fitness brand. I spent nearly 2 years on that project and through months of research learned how gyms and health clubs only ever attract a small percentage of the full population. So many of us simply don’t want to see ourselves in what looks like a hostile, difficult, technical environment.

Ten years of exposure to health and wellbeing culminated when we launched an online, corporate health and wellbeing portal in 2005. It was years ahead of its time and therefore flopped spectacularly, clearing the path for what would become Reward Gateway, which was, fortunately for me - perfectly in the right moment!

One size doesn't fit all

Over all the years I’ve spent involved in health and wellbeing the thing I’ve learned most of all is that one size doesn’t fit all. Wellbeing can mean something so very different to each and every one of us. In fact it is hard to think of a part of the overall HR and employee engagement landscape that is more personal, more nuanced, more sensitive that an employee’s personal health and wellbeing.

So we can invite our staff to be measured or measure themselves; we can use “big data” to attempt to get an overview of the health of our workforce and we can use metrics like absence days to try to get a number to judge the wellbeing of our workforce, but this is exactly what this is - a number.

Treat people as individuals

We will never truly make a meaningful impact on our employee population as a whole unless we treat people as individuals, allow them to self-select what their personal wellbeing priority is for them and provide them with an immersive range, the broadest range possible of help and support to make those early steps easier.

Gym memberships are fine - of course you should provide discounts or subsidy if you can, but they’ll only ever reach 11-12% of your people. So what about the other 88% of your workforce? How are they increasing their physical activity? Physical wellbeing is so much broader than that.

My 74-year-old mother isn’t at the gym three times a week, but she resolutely walks 10,000 steps every single day counted by the step counter built into her iPhone - no unnecessary Fitbit or Fitbug for her!

So the question remains; Are you offering help and support to every one of your employees?

Mental health, sleep, nutrition and healthy eating are huge areas for so many people.

But now the time is really coming for employee wellbeing.

An exciting future

I’ve never been more excited for the future of employee wellbeing and its role in the productivity and happiness of a workplace. Technology is catching up with our needs and it’s making more things possible every day. With a growing awareness of wellbeing and the impact of poor physical and mental health on our people it is crucial that our wellbeing programmes cover all areas of wellbeing from mental wellbeing, physical and financial.

It's about creating a place where it is ok to ask for help in a comfortable environment, where you can encourage your people to live better and feel better by facilitating sustainable lifestyle changes that really make a difference to their personal wellbeing.

This article was written by Glenn Elliott, founder and CEO of Reward Gateway