Your employees bring a broad range of beliefs, habits, and attitudes to their lives, both at home and at work. Whether these promote wellbeing (solid exercise habits, time out for family and friends) or distract from it (smoking, poor diet), their practice is intimately tied with each employee’s sense of identity and beliefs about what the future holds. Does your culture promote positive beliefs, habits, and attitudes? Or reinforce negative ones? In this short piece, I’d like to discuss how culture may reinforce – or weaken – health promotion efforts and how you can maximize your effectiveness in either case.

So, what is wellbeing, anyhow, and how do we help people fold it into our working lives? The Gallup polling and analytics group has done research on personal wellbeing and human thriving for decades. They define wellbeing as: 

“Wellbeing is about the combination of our love for what we do each day, the quality of our relationships, the security of our finances, the vibrancy of our physical health and the pride we take in what we have contributed to our communities.” (See: Gallup Wellbeing).

Now, contrast this with the typical workplace wellness program, whose mechanics generally include: 

• Promotion of physical activity and healthy diets
• Biometric measurement and improvement
• Chronic condition education, management, and self-care
• Team building through health-related challenges and competitions
• Mindfulness, mental health support, and purpose-building

We’ll discuss the distinction between wellness and wellbeing in a future piece but, for now, note that these mechanics are all focused on helping employees build the foundations for wellbeing. The key insight I’d like you to take away today is that this may not be obvious to your participants! For example, I was working with a prominent union a while back and the consensus among the union reps was that biometric screening and assessment was a threat to their members, not a benefit. So, even though corporate leadership genuinely wanted to help, their health promotion efforts were struggling because members did not perceive them as helpful or well-intentioned!

In your own work, I encourage you to consider carefully how your efforts are perceived and to be open to the possibility that participants have a view of the program quite different from your intent. Is a lipid screening program an unwelcome intrusion into employees’ personal medical status or as part of an effort to help them stay ahead of chronic disease? Are programs to enhance activity and exercise seen as another demand of the workplace, or a rewarding way to gain energy and confidence? 

These are critical questions: over the last 30 years, I have seen dozens of programs struggle not because they were poorly designed but because their culture did not inspire trust. For a much deeper dive into organizational trust, I can think of no better source than this piece from the Harvard Business Review: The Neuroscience of Trust. I encourage you to share this piece with senior management along with an explanation of how it relates to your wellness program efforts.

So, how can you advance your health promotion program given your current culture? Here are some key, actionable ideas for you to implement.

1. Communication is central to building trust in your efforts. New users on our platform are often surprised to find out that we include a comprehensive communications module (most vendors do). We’ve evolved these tools over the years because we see the extraordinary importance that frequent, culturally sensitive communications play in a successful health promotion program. For your program to succeed, you must leverage these tools (with our help!) to communicate not only the nuts and bolts of your program but to frequently reinforce your ideals and program goals.
2. Programs in a high-trust culture can leverage that trust by explicitly linking to cultural values. This is one of the easiest strategies for increasing the effectiveness of your program. How to do this? Easy! Ensure that communications consistently include a supportive narrative framework illustrating the link between your program and your cultural ideals. That is, ensure your employees understand that the broader goal of your efforts is to promote their wellbeing, personal thriving, and workplace success. Make it personal, not organizational, as well. “Your success is reason enough” goes much further than “this is required” or even “your success is our success.”
3. In a lower-trust culture, emphasize the independence of your staff and program to the full, but honest, extent. We’ve frequently seen programs suffer from the perception that their data may be used to fire or otherwise marginalize employees even when such data is fully insulated from the larger organization. Getting around this requires that you consistently communicate a message of trust and independence. 
4. In any culture, it is vital that employees understand that your programs are not just ends in themselves but serve a higher goal. You must clearly communicate the personal, long-term advantages that accrue to employees that embrace your program. It isn’t just about weight, or activity levels, or anxiety management but rather about personal, long-term wellbeing in the deepest sense.
5. Consider using our Survey tool to query users about their perception of your program and its intent. Questions like “Do you feel that our wellness program is built with your best interests in mind?” or “Do you look upon our wellness program as a trusted source of information and inspiration?” can uncover a lot of valuable information in just a few questions.
6. Carefully assess the kind of information you collect and the goals you give your participants in light of your organizational culture. An invasive biometric requirement, for example, is going to have less success in a low-trust culture than a fun team challenge or programming related to stress and mental health. 
7. In any culture, a program that gives users a population-wide goal – where everyone contributes to a common metric or charity effort – will help enhance trust and build a sense of belonging. Consider using one as a way to get your program off on the right foot!

The bottom line is that professionals who build successful programs consistently think about the bigger picture and tie their programming to their participants’ personal goals and ambitions. Take a while to think on these issues and to build appropriate messaging strategy and watch your program soar!