Sibson Consulting's Perspectives - Reaching Employees in the Right Place at the Right Time: Four Steps to Successfully Communicating Your Organization’s Wellness Program

October 2008

VOL. 16 ISSUE 4

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Reaching Employees in the Right Place at the Right Time: Four Steps to Successfully Communicating Your Organization’s Wellness Program

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Think about the 45-year-old employee who has been smoking for 30 years. He knows it is "bad" for him, yet he is still smoking. Although his employer may have run smoking-cessation campaigns over the years, it is not so much the frequency of the message that matters as it is having it in the right place at the right time. Offering a wellness program¹ is important, but it is not enough. When it comes to motivating employees to change their behavior, communicating the wellness program is key.

This article describes the four steps an organization must take to ensure successful communication of its wellness program to employees.

Step 1: Conduct a Communications Assessment

Assessing a wellness communications plan first requires taking an inventory of the various communications vehicles the organization uses. This inventory will provide a gauge of how effectively programs are being communicated.² The organization should review whether the information is readily accessible for employees and easy to understand. Are communications consistent, recognizable and well-organized? To what extent do they support the organization’s stated value proposition? Are they targeted by employee life stage, disease stage and other parameters?

It is important to check to see that communications are aligned with overall wellness objectives. For example, if an employee wants to lose weight, does he or she have to scour the medical program to determine what coverage is available, search work/life programs to find support courses, check the cafeteria bulletin board for a Weight Watchers® meeting and read the employee assistance program (EAP) documents to determine that counseling is available (if counseling for weight loss is even mentioned)?

Once the inventory is completed, the organization needs to poll the employees to learn what they think about its wellness communications. It is important to find out how they get information about the programs that are available, what works and what does not, what is most valuable to them and what they want to know more about.

There are two ways to poll employees. While written or online surveys will produce quantitative results, which are helpful but may be open to interpretation, focus groups are better at yielding vital, targeted, first-hand, qualitative information. A well-run focus group will yield opinions and impressions that otherwise would have no outlet for expression, empowering employees to elaborate on what others are saying and to express their honest opinions.

Step 2: Develop a Communications Strategy

The next step is to build a wellness communications campaign around the issues that were identified by the assessment. (The sequence of events in developing a communications campaign is shown in Figure 1, below.)

In doing so, the organization should be sure to:

Set short- and long-term goals. The organization must articulate what it wants to get out of its communications and set participation goals for the short-term (e.g., 75 percent of the employee population takes a health-risk assessment within the first three months). Results-oriented goals should be set for the long term (e.g., 50 percent of smokers complete a smoking-cessation program).
Understand the organizational culture. The better the communications are tailored to the organization’s employees, the more effective the communications will be. Communications should be designed to make a particular audience take action (e.g., target smokers by placing communications in locations where they tend to congregate).
Identify and target the unique needs of the organization’s various audiences, based on career and life stages. The demographics of the audience should have an impact on the communications. For example, a postcard that some audiences think is irreverent and provocative might strike others as being in questionable taste.
Build a consistent wellness brand. This may include a name, logo, color scheme and/or an eye-catching message. The goal is to grab the employees’ attention with something that is action oriented. With so much going on in the world, wellness communications can be easy to overlook.
Decide whether incentives will play a role. A health condition that is not life-threatening and involves maintenance or prevention could land low on an employee’s priority list. In such cases, incentives can help make the issue more of a priority. Incentives can include premium reductions, cash, gift cards and individual recognition (such as diplomas). Organizations should remember that incentives are not always necessary and may create an additional administrative burden.³ Once again, it is important to know the audience and what will motivate them.
Select the media to be used to communicate the wellness program. The organization needs to look at its audience and what will make its particular employees pay attention and take action. One good strategy is to see where employees spend their free time at work and place print materials accordingly. It is important to determine whether the majority of employees have computer access and will respond to electronic campaigns; if so, the focus can be online.
Follow the best practices of wellness program communications. These are described in a sidebar to this article: "Wellness Program Communications Best Practices: A Checklist".

Step 3: Build Employee Awareness and Create Demand

A strategy is only as good as its implementation. When implementing a wellness program, an organization should first raise employee awareness. Two types of awareness are key:

Program Awareness This is knowledge of the wellness program itself — what is available, where, when and how to access it. This information can be best communicated though "how-to" and "did-you-know" messages.
Individual Awareness Organizations must recognize that every employee is at a different state of behavior change and employees need to know where they stand on the wellness continuum. (See Figure 2 below.) Communications and support resources (e.g., coaching and assessment tools) should address people in different stages of change with information that is structured for them and is easily accessible. The organization must encourage employees to take a health-risk assessment and be sure to stress confidentiality.

¹ This Stages of Change Model was developed by James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente in the late 1970s and early 1980s at The University of Rhode Island.

The next step is to spur employees to act on the messages being conveyed. The organization needs to get them to dig deeper, to learn more about the resources that are available and to take advantage of them. This involves setting up mechanisms whereby employees can find the shortest possible route to action and alert the employer to what they have done.

Step 4: Keep it Up with Ongoing Campaigns

Organizations need to use periodic reinforcement to maintain positive behavior. This will ensure that the message is there when each employee "wakes up" and decides it is time for him or her to make a change. It is important to keep in mind the old "rule of seven": It takes telling someone something seven times in seven different ways for that information to actually sink in. This may seem a bit much, but remember the 45-year-old smoker with the 30-year habit? A wellness program tries to change behavior that people have maintained for years, if not decades. That is going to take more than a newsletter.

Conclusion

A wellness initiative creates a healthy environment for employees and dependents that results in reduced workforce costs and enables them to be more productive. At the core of every wellness program is the drive to change employee behavior. The success or failure of the wellness program comes down to the degree to which the employees respond to the program’s efforts to change their behavior towards healthier lifestyles.

To facilitate behavior change, organizations need to review how their wellness program is communicated to employees. Without effective communications the best wellness program in the world is not going to succeed.

About the authors:

Erin Hodges is a consultant in Sibson Consulting’s National Communications Practice. She can be reached in the New York office at 212.251.5071 or at ehodges@sibson.com.

Randolph Carter is a vice president in Sibson Consulting’s National Communications Practice. He can be reached in the New York office at 212.251.5022 or at rcarter@sibson.com.

¹ Wellness programs use education, motivation and support to guide employees to make wise lifestyle decisions, motivate those who are "ambivalent" to take action, reduce the chance that individuals will develop chronic diseases like diabetes, and help people to be in the best health they can be.
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² An organization can assess its wellness communications at the same time as it conducts a wellness inventory (see "Is Your Wellness Program a Scattershot Effort ... or on Target to Serve Employees and the Organization," in the June 2008 issue of Perspectives.)
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³ See the March 10, 2008 issue of Sibson Consulting's Capital Checkup, "DOL Issues Checklist for Wellness Programs".
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