How to Engage Employees in Workforce Health!

Hi folks,

  

This week I’m blogging about positive engagement. When a company offers a string health related activities (i.e. Health club memberships, company sports teams, charity events etc), these are mainly used by employees that already live an active & healthy lifestyle. This is great but the real drain on your company health could be those ‘Yellow flag’ employees that give such activities a wide berth & are hard to engage.

Here’s a course of action that I’d recommend for targeting your Pre-contemplators (those that aren’t interested in being healthy):

 

a)      We need to speak to them & find out what’s important to them, why health isn’t a priority, what their opinions are on where / how they work, & see if we can relate the benefits of being healthy to this.

 

b)      We have to Make It Easy - This means no cost to the employee & low time commitment. Examples include providing healthy breakfast options on-site, pleasant outdoor areas to take their break, the ‘bike to work’ scheme, on-site 30min exercise classes (pre / post shift).

 

c)       Monetary value / incentive. We all know that money is an incentive for everyone so let’s use it. Provide free fresh fruit & veg in bowls around the office or as free side options in the canteen, or perhaps operate a voucher system where a certain number of steps on their pedometer = discount off healthy options at the canteen. As well as this really shout about any free / discounted health incentives that you may be running alongside.

 
 

Next weeks blog will focus on the Contemplators / Relapse’s. Don’t miss it!

 

If you are interested in discussing any of the above then please contact me.

 

James