Health & Wellbeing

At PartnerComm, we work with many organizations who invest in the overall health and wellbeing of their employees. These companies focus on their employees both inside and outside of the office, and they’re most successful in cultivating a trusting culture that people want to become and remain a part of.

In doing so, they focus on a good health and wellbeing strategy that includes both physical health and emotional health, as well as promoting healthy living with a work/life balance and financial wellbeing.

What are employee benefits: health & wellbeing?

Health and wellbeing programs are popular among most employers. Companies use these programs to encourage better health and promote resources available for health and wellbeing.

Most companies offer benefits packages to support employees physical, emotional and financial wellbeing. Employers understand the value of providing these resources and benefits plans, including:

• Health insurance,
• Life and disability insurance,
• Paid vacation,
• Healthy living options,
• Pension and retirement plans,
• And much more.

However, they struggle with employees knowing these resources exist and getting employees to participate.

Depending on your company’s strategy and goals, health and wellbeing programs can come with incentives for your employees which is an excellent way to get people involved and motivated. Incentives can be extremely helpful in promoting an optimal state of health for your employees by asking them to hit well-established targets. Incentive programs are popular for things like flu shots, a yearly check-up and preventive screenings to avoid underlying health problems, healthy eating, and financial awareness.

And though physical health is important for many reasons, the emotional wellbeing of your employees is another main part of the overall health of your company. It is critical for employers to destigmatize mental health issues, so your employees feel comfortable using the resources you have available.

You also want to help your employees be financially healthy. Offering tools they can use to access financial counseling, save for their retirement, build a budget or even pay off their student loan debt can be very beneficial to their financial wellbeing and overall happiness.

Why are employee’s health & wellbeing benefits important?

As an employer, you want to hire candidates who will join the company, become a part of the culture, be successful and plan to stay at your organization for the long-term. Attracting and retaining talent can be difficult, so in order to do so, you must let your employees know you care and that you have their backs. They need to feel a sense of belonging in the workplace. Let them know you’re there for them.

A health and wellbeing program can be a great way to do this and engage your employees in the company culture. Things like health challenges, company wellbeing events, and resources will help get your employees engaged and involved.

But more and more, companies are seeing that physical and social wellbeing is not always the top concern of some employees. In today’s times, emotional wellbeing has become a large focus to employers and rightfully so. Based on a CDC Pulse Survey, in November 2020, 37% of US adults reported symptoms of anxiety and depression, compared to 8.2% of adults in January — June of 2019.

With employees feeling isolated, exhausted and overwhelmed, they are struggling with the wellbeing happiness factor more than ever before. They are struggling with this new normal. Now more than ever, health and wellbeing benefits are indispensable.

How to communicate employee benefits: health & wellbeing

You want to keep your employees engaged, and wellness programs and incentives are an excellent way to do so. Not only do your employees need to know what resources are out there to use for physical, emotional and financial health, they need to know their employer cares about them actually using these resources.

When communicating about your health and wellbeing benefits, your communication needs to recognize and reassure employees, especially in this new normal. Many employees are not getting the proper exercise and nutrition they need, are going through financial stress and several are struggling with mental health issues.

You want to encourage open dialogue. In doing so, you have to flip the focus of putting time and energy into telling employees about all of the resources they can access and start focusing more on your employees’ needs and feelings about certain topics.

Let your employees know you care and that you are here for them. In return this will help and mean more to your employees than just trying to encourage them to use a resource they may not feel comfortable using.

PartnerComm is here to give you techniques to communicate health and wellbeing benefits while also letting your company culture shine.

First, send a simple feeling-focused message, loudly.

Your employees want to know the company cares and when they see messaging communicating empathy and acceptance, they are willing to put more trust in the resources you offer and will feel more comfortable using these resources.

You want your health and wellbeing program to be seen and used by your employees, so don’t be afraid to go big with key messaging. Promote awareness of what the company has to offer by putting messaging in several places like wall clings on conference doors and elevators, digital signs in breakrooms, emails to employees, banner stands where employees enter the building each day — by sheer volume, you will get the idea across that the company cares and is there for their employees.

Focus on your employees’ feelings and provide support by using the company’s DNA and culture.

Authentic storytelling from your own employees is always a great way to support messaging, especially with a topic like health and wellbeing. People motivate people and storytelling is great way to keep your employees engaged. When you have real employees share their stories, you will make people feel relatable which in return can help with employee awareness and education of the benefits you offer.

Having your own employees share encouragement with positive stories and pictures will help create a feel of community which will in return help you build a positive company culture. It will also make your employees feel more comfortable using the resources available.

You must train and educate leadership.

Lastly, you have to get your leadership on board. This includes your managers, human resources management and executive level leadership. Give them something to work with.

Set up a manager’s toolkit on your website where only your leadership can access the information. The toolkit can include PowerPoint Presentations, talking points, videos and info sheets about the resources offered.

Give the managers best practices on how to talk to their employees about their health and wellbeing and how the company can help meet their needs.

When communicating your health and wellbeing program, maximize the probability that people will reach out for help. Whether they need help for physical, emotional or financial wellbeing, remember to change the focus from only promoting all of the resources you have to offer, and begin to focus on the company culture and your employees’ feelings.

An employee benefits: health & wellbeing communication example

PartnerComm was asked to help create an innovative strategy to communicate emotional health during this difficult time when people are struggling more than ever. We decided to communicate a feeling-focused message by saying, “It’s okay to not be okay.” This term is used often and not necessarily original, but our creative team decided to combine this phrase with art and shapes and tie this message together by saying “life comes in lots of shapes and sizes.” We wanted employees to know that the company understands a lot of times life can be overwhelming and it’s okay to not be okay.

With this messaging in mind, our creative team chose words like “overwhelmed” and “anxious” and accompanied these words to what the company was trying to say: “let’s talk about it.”

In each communication piece, there was a resource listed for the employee to use. In the case of the wall clings, an app with a QR code was used to allow employees to scan the code and go straight to the app where they were able to talk to a counselor, privately and confidentially.

Then, we helped this organization support these messages with authentic storytelling from their own employees.

We added a section to their website for emotional health and shared these stories there. This gave employees a place to learn about the wellbeing resources offered. It also gave employees a sense of community since their colleagues were also struggling with issues of their own.