Designing Corporate Wellness Challenges with Long-Term ROI

How can corporate wellness challenges drive long-term business impact?

Traditional, short-term corporate wellness challenges fail because they lack executive participation and long-term strategic vision. To generate lasting ROI, leaders must actively participate alongside junior staff, ensure absolute inclusivity for all physical abilities, and directly tie the challenge to the utilization of underused mental health and PTO benefits.

The premise behind corporate wellness challenges offers good intentions. Challenges promote a sense of mental and physical wellbeing that can solicit a sense of community across a team or organization. From a strategic standpoint, challenges help employees feel healthier, making them more productive and ultimately helping businesses achieve their business objectives. Tactics include inviting yoga instructors to host sessions, downloading mobile fitness applications, ticking off boxes on bingo cards, and taking cues from giant colorful wall posters.

Beyond health benefits, incentives to participate include everything from money and gift cards to time off to praise and support from employees.

However, the problem with short-term wellness challenges is that while intentions are good, they are typically incomplete and don’t address long-term impact.

If you’re creating a wellness challenge or working to communicate one to your employees, here is what to consider to extend its value.

Leaders: lean in. Junior- and mid-level employees look at every move that senior leaders make in companies. That includes how much they participate in what some might consider auxiliary or non-essential activities like wellness challenges. Challenges require participation and support from all levels in an organization. As an agency executive, I took it upon myself to participate in wellness activities. I wanted to show junior staff that executives are making their mental and physical wellbeing a priority.

Recently, I had the opportunity to lead an agency-wide wellness program. It was a six-week course, which included workshops and weekly videos. The agency even created a specific Chasing the Sun Slack channel. This agency has reported less employee turnover, and business revenue has increased. But it all happened in large part because the entire agency leadership participated, and the agency owner committed to her entire staff that they were making impactful changes to meeting frequency and work on Fridays.

Recommendation: ensure you have the backing, support, and commitment of senior leadership participation before starting a new challenge.

Are you inclusive? Despite their potential benefits, “wellness” doesn’t always mean eating healthy snacks and doing planks. Being inclusive of all employees is essential to hosting a successful challenge. Design challenges in a way that enables all employees to participate no matter their condition or circumstances. One example: are you creating bingo cards for employees? If so, consider including mental wellbeing tasks, including sending someone a thank you card or volunteering your time for a local charity. Giving time and appreciating others not only helps others but ultimately makes us feel better ourselves.

Recommendation: include your diversity and inclusion team in the discussion to ensure all perspectives are represented in the challenges.

Use challenges as a springboard for long-term change. By themselves, wellness challenges will have minimal impact. However, partnering with your Human Resources (HR) team can be a powerful opportunity to ensure a positive long-term business impact. HR leaders in your company are always looking for ways to effectively promote the existing benefits already offered by your company.

One example is to address paid time off. Recently, I spoke at a conference for School PR leaders. I asked attendees if they had scheduled time off for the upcoming year. More than 2/3 of the respondents said they did not have time scheduled! This allowed me to help empower them to identify time to prepare for their next vacation. In addition, challenges are the perfect opportunity to remind employees of how to use paid time off appropriately and sick time in your organization.

Recommendation: connect with your HR leaders on informing your teams of the benefits that your company provides.

Bonus tip: what’s happening on day 32? Wellness challenges, by design, are time-driven. Then what? Like any good public relations professional, plan for what’s on day eight or 32 of your challenge? Have the next steps in mind before you launch your challenge. Is this a beta test? Meet with decision-makers right away to determine the following steps to evolve your program.

Should you continue to host wellness challenges? Yes, however, keep in mind the opportunities to make that plank competition contribute to something even more important than healthy abs!