Company Wellness Programs and Helping Community – a Magic Combination

If you volunteer, you know that special feeling you get in your soul knowing you helped someone. During a time when we are glued to technology, we can easily miss what’s most important – personal connections.

As eloquently described in Laura Putnam’s book Workplace Wellness that Works, “community well-being is the differentiator between a good life and a great one.”

As per Putnam’s book, a survey by United Health Group found that after a volunteering experience, the vast majority of respondents reported feeling healthier, in a better mood, less stressed and more connected to their purpose in life, and having a higher level of self-esteem.

Wow! Volunteering can do all that?

Yep! Imagine how great employees could feel if they could participate in company wellness programs and community? Magic!

WELLNESS BENEFITS AND COMMUNITY

Most of us feel passionate about one cause or another. Likely because the cause has a personal connection. Perhaps you lost someone to cancer or feel passionate about helping children get an education or simply want to help a neighbor.

With wellness programs, you want to engage as many participants as possible. Why not combine wellness and community? If you are like many people with both work and family obligations, it can be challenging to volunteer and exercise - there just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day. Combine both and that fuzzy feeling lasts for days!

A GROWING TREND

We are seeing a growing trend among customers using our corporate wellness platform that they want to more closely marry company wellness programs and community.

As an example, a global health and care provider recently completed a very successful step wellness program where teams of employees were competing with each other to track steps which translated to points in our platform thereby combining the monetization of program success and employer-sponsored donations to specific causes.  The employer made donations to causes at a global and a local level.

6 BENEFITS OF COMBINING WELLNESS AND COMMUNITY

Combining both wellness activities and the community produced the following wellness benefits for this provider:

• Active & Moving - Employees got active and engaged by logging steps by entering steps via the platform (and their wearable device) and tracking progress on digital maps.
• Pride in Community – Employees were elated and proud to give back to their community. An added bonus is recognition in the community that the employer was giving back to the citizens where employees reside. Employees were proud to say they were engaged in this company-sponsored initiative and were loud and proud in celebrating their achievements.
• Physical & Mental Health – beyond the health benefits of employees walking, they also experienced some or all of those feelings of less stress, better mood, purpose in life and so on. It’s a win-win all around.
• Employee Engagement – as a global employer, they wanted to better connect and engage their employees in achieving a common goal.  The healthy competition made if fun with employees encouraging and supporting each other – exactly what every organization wants to see.
• Teambuilding – Further to employee engagement, employees that wouldn’t normally interact with each other in other locations had the opportunity to connect on a deeper level. Once you connect with a colleague on a deeper level than just work, you open doors to having a ‘friend at work’ which has been proven to boost engagement and mutual trust.  Both of which is critical to developing a culture of trust.

CoreHealth Team Building and Helping Community

As part of CoreHealth’s quarterly business reviews with staff, teambuilding is a fundamental part of the process.

Just last week, the team had a great time collectively chopping veggies and simmering soup at Saj Common Kitchen for the benefit of the Emergency Youth Overnight Shelter (supported by the Okanagan Boys and Girls Club). This whole experience was a result of the fantastic efforts of the Kelowna-chapter of Soup Sisters - a non-profit charitable social enterprise dedicated to providing comfort to women, children and youth through the making, sharing and donating of soup. 

The Four Soup-Making Teams had fun and said they would like to do something like this again!