Employee wellness programs have been around for many years now with companies giving out rewards for completing health risk assessments, opting in for preventative screening, getting annual physicals and flu shots and participating in wellness events. Aside from all of these health and wellness activities, I have new approach for you to consider with your employee wellness program in the form of user-generated content. I would like for you to consider building out a section of your employee health and wellness program websitededicated to a wellness knowledge center.
What is a Knowledge Center?
A wellness knowledge center is a resource library that can hold healthy meal ideas and recipes, tips, local walking paths and biking trails, wellness news and links to wellness websites. The idea behind the wellness knowledge center is that all of these resources are submitted, voted and utilized by participants.
Why would my employees contribute to this?
Just as employees have earned wellness rewards in the past, you can motivate employees to contribute to the health and wellness program by giving them incentives. For instance, one client of mine awards a flat number of points for each employee wellness program submission received (up to five submissions a month). When the content is posted online, the contributor’s name is listed to give the person credit. As an added incentive, people are given points to vote on their favorite content. If your content receives a vote, you also receive the points from the person voting for your content. Another one of my clients takes it a step further and publishes a quarterly wellness newsletter in which the top rated content is published. If your content makes it to the newsletter, you receive additional rewards.
Not only can you structure the wellness program knowledge center so that people will want to contribute to it, the fact that it is generated by employees and for employees really boosts the buy-in factor of the wellness program. The information added to the wellness knowledge center can be even better than just finding the information online as it is local and relevant to your employees and their tastes. This also helps to make the website a point of destination for people and will make them more aware of the wellness program and its goals.
How would employees actually add content?
If you are thinking about how employees could add their own wellness ideas and activities, we have been able to make this very simple by adding forms to our clients’ wellness program websites. All submissions are checked and once approved by the client, added to the knowledge center in the appropriate section. When you first incorporate a wellness program, you can also put up some sample submissions to show employees what kinds of content will help contribute to overall employee health and wellness awareness.
Could a Wellness Program really be successful?
Studies have shown that wellness programs have a three to one investment ratio and the most successful ones are able to spread awareness and acceptance of health and wellness philosophy both in the office and home. When you include a user generated knowledge center, you are putting the success of the employee wellness program right in the hands of employees, which ups the WIIFM factor and investment of time and effort people will contribute.