Engagement is capturing the attention of an individual to support their continued wellbeing. It can include participation rates in your programs, taking action on your important announcements, and active conversations on your company message boards, chat, and with each other in person.
Let’s take a minute to pause here though. It’s important to note that engagement is really hard. And there isn’t just one solution. Supporting people on their health journey requires a massive eco-system both in and outside of your company’s wellness program. It requires tapping in to behavior change, social support systems, and primary care relationships on a mind, body, financial, and spiritual level.
To further complicate things, what engagement looks like for you and your organization will be very different from what you might see with others. Tapping into your company culture and employee interests is one of the best places to start. Here are a few tips to help you drive engagement at your organization.
EXTRINSIC MOTIVATION
Extrinsic Motivation is based on motivators outside of the individual. Examples include rewards like cash or prizes and can include recognition or praise like winning a contest. Most programs rely on extrinsic motivation for the initial engagement with the program.
INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
Intrinsic Motivation involves carrying out a behavior simply because it’s personally rewarding. Examples include volunteering because you want to help others or exercise and proper nutrition because you value good health. Intrinsic motivation helps with long-term behavior change.
Rewards and incentives are only a piece of the engagement puzzle. They’re great motivators to get someone started with something new, but studies have shown incentives and rewards don’t always keep people on track. We like to combine a few different incentives for not only variety, but also accounting for different levels of effort involved. Here are a few examples:
PREMIUM
DISCOUNTS
HSA
CONTRIBUTIONS
CASH
REWARDS
POINTS
PROGRAMS
GIFT CARDS
& OTHER PRIZES
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Variety is key. Is your population primarily online, offline, or a mix of both? Your goal is to communicate with people through the channels they’re already using. We use a variety of communication methods including:
• Email
• Mailings
• Video
• Health fairs
• Company challenges
• Website and in-app notifications
• Intranet announcements
• Wellness blog
• Social media
• Health coaching calls
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If you’ve been responsible for any type of wellness program before, you know just how tricky managing everything can be. Chances are, it’s where you developed your expert-level Excel skills or work hacks for communicating with the masses. Administer your entire engagement program online through our Lifestyle Rewards system. With incentive management and validation options for each activity, you’ll quickly see the activities that are getting the most traction and run reports with the click of a button.