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Best Practices For Building a Culture of Wellness

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Just having a wellness program in place doesn't guarantee it will succeed. Try these ideas to help employees stay on target:

  • Align worksite policies and your program. For example, what's your employee break policy? Do you have a company policy on smoking to tie into your stop smoking program offering? Do you have a walking program and walking paths around your worksites?
  • Integrate the program into other company offerings, such as:1
    • Employee assistance programs, or EAP, to help with personal issues.
    • Occupational health safety, or OHS, to prevent work injuries.
    • Return-to-work programs to help rejoin the workforce after short-term disability.
  • Create a brand for your wellness program and use it for program promotion. It creates recognition and helps lend credibility. We've got proven promotional materials you can use.
  • Use data, diagnostics and metrics. The more ways you're able to hone in on your target audience, meet needs, and measure success, the more likely you are to build a long-term return on investment.
  • Include personal coaching, especially in programs focused on long-term behavior change. Whether by phone, online or face-to face, coaching helps maintain employee engagement and positive reinforcement. For example, our Healthy Lifestyles program reported results from 2013-2014 that 69% of participants who were coached improved or eliminated at least one health risk.2,3
  • Build variety into the types of programs you provide. You can create a wellness calendar of events. Consider:
    • Lunch & learns
    • Workshops
    • Team challenges
    • Support groups
    • Volunteer opportunities
    • Health fairs


1 RAND Corporation website: Worksite Wellness Program Study (2013): rand.org.

2 Healthy Lifestyles program internal data study for 2013-2014. Measured population is based on members enrolled in coaching who completed the Well-Being Assessment in T1 and T2 and had at least two successful coaching calls.

3 The Healthy Lifestyles programs are administered by Healthways, Inc., an independent company.

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