Q1 2020 Texas CEO Magazine

a Y percent rejection rate, and I had tremendous access to all
the granular underlying data. And I could see whether Joe’s
productivity went up, down, or stayed the same as he attended
the fitness center and took part in other health initiatives.
In the decades since, a lot has changed in the corporate world.
Today, it’s very rare to find an objective measure of productivity.
Employees are increasingly doing knowledge work, and their
productivity often comes down to their supervisor’s subjective
opinion. But there are plenty of other things you can still track.
Far and away, controlling healthcare costs is the metric most
leaders care about when they implement a wellness program.
Tracking these costs is indeed an effective way to measure
how a wellness program is doing (even though many other
factors, of course, affect healthcare cost). I recommend
having a system that shows how a certain employee or
cohort of employees’ participation in the wellness program
correlates to their healthcare cost over the long term.
Beyond healthcare cost, I also recommend tracking
metrics like absenteeism, employee engagement (via
survey responses), employee turnover, and percent of
employment offers accepted—all of which can be positively
affected by a great employee wellness program.
Any efforts you make to support employee wellness will
almost certainly have a positive effect, even if it’s small and
hard to measure. But it is important to track the outcomes
you care about most to determine how your wellness
program is performing and how it might be improved.
5. Incentivize participation.
In a perfect world, your staff would be intrinsically
drawn to participate in your wellness program. But in
reality, you’ll get the best results from kick-starting
participation by strategic use of incentives.
Fortunately, you don’t have to drop a lot of money. At several
companies, we gamified the process through a points system.
Once employees rack up a certain amount of points, they
get special recognition and small prizes like a water bottle
or T-shirt. Don’t underestimate the usefulness of these
measures. It’s shocking what people will do for a T-shirt. At
other companies, we saw significant traction from allowing
people to earn paid time off through participation.
But there’s one other incentive that I’ve found to be the
most significant. Which leads us to the final tip . . .
6. If you have wellness staff,
they need to be excellent.
In larger companies that have full- or part-time wellness
staff—whether it’s nutritionists, trainers, wellness directors,
or otherwise—the quality of these individuals is probably the
biggest factor in employee participation and the overall success
of the program. If these people aren’t well-trained professionals
that employees actually want to be around, the program is not
going to be successful. Period. I’m currently working with the
Texas Department of Criminal Justice as they hire, train, and
certify a new team of wellness professionals, and getting great
people with a personal touch is at the forefront of our minds.
Ultimately, it’s up to you, the CEO—in partnership
with your executive team, HR team, and/or appointed
wellness point person—to create a wellness program
that fits your organization’s culture, work environment,
budget, and goals. But keeping these six tips in mind
will help you avoid the pitfalls I’ve seen many times.
One final word for the CEO: Don’t forget about your own
wellness. You have a tremendous amount of stress placed on
you. Being able to handle that stress—whether it’s by running
three miles a day or going to a progressive muscle relaxation
class—is critical not only for modeling wellness for your
workforce but for keeping yourself at the very top of your game.
Gary Oden is a professor in the Department of Kinesiology at Sam Houston
State University. In addition to serving as Corporate Wellness Director for
Westinghouse Corporation, Dr. Oden has served as a wellness-program
consultant for MetLife, Aker Kvaerner, Memorial Hermann Health System,
and the State of Texas. His current research focus is speed and agility
training techniques, and he is currently conducting research comparing
speed and agility training equipment.
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