An important part of any corporate wellbeing program or wellness challenge is the rewards or incentives you provide for your employees. Using the right rewards to motivate employees not only increases participation rates but also may help employees keep up their healthy habits after your program ends. 

Instead of one grand prize, it’s better to have a variety of rewards so more employees feel included. We suggest having a system that allows employees to be rewarded at different levels based on how they do in your challenge. Having smaller prizes in addition to larger ones will help increase participation as more employees will feel they have a chance at winning something.  

Without further ado, here are our reward suggestions for your wellness program.

Fitness Products

With so many health and wellness products out there, they work great as smaller prizes. Things like yoga mats, yoga blocks, dumbbells, foam rollers, a running belt or an armband incentivize employees to keep working out after winning them.

Electronics

For some of your bigger prizes, more expensive fitness products like Fitbit, Garmin or AirPods are great. They encourage participation and healthy living, especially incentivizing those who may already have their basic fitness equipment but haven’t wanted to splurge on a wearable.

Experiences

Some employees might not want more things, which is why we suggest giving away experiences. Putting a healthy spin on this could look like giving away gym memberships, workout class passes or personal training sessions. For smaller prizes, you can give away a voucher for one yoga class at a local studio and for larger prizes you could give a high-performing employee a gym membership for a whole year.

Gift Cards

Some employees might not be motivated by all the health and wellness products. In that case, you can always do gift cards. But giftcards to big businesses like Amazon or Target aren’t the only way to go. Rewarding with gift cards to local places (e.g. the café near your workplace that your employees frequent for lunch) can be another great option.

Workplace Specific

Prizes to help make that work-life balance a little easier, like an extra vacation day or a pass to wear more casual clothing for the day, can also be great incentives for your hard-working employees.

Think about your workplace culture to guide you in choosing the right prizes for your wellness program. With that said, every employee will be different. To figure out what your employees enjoy the most, we suggest offering a variety of prizes and seeing which ones employees redeem the most.

There are so many different types of workplace wellness programs, it can be overwhelming deciding what works for your business. At the end of your wellness initiative, the goal is for your employees to think more about their health and make healthier decisions. When you put your employees’ needs at the center of your wellness program, it makes narrowing down your options easier. Here are a few questions to help you figure out what will work best for your company and your employees.

What was the last wellness initiative and how did it go?

If you did something in the past that employees seemed to enjoy, got good feedback or had a high participation rate, then you might want to do something similar. Of course, you don’t want to do the exact same thing but re-use elements that got the best feedback. For example, if you had an “awards ceremony” after a month-long fitness challenge that people seemed to really enjoy, do an awards ceremony again but do a different wellness challenge. If your last wellness program didn’t do as well as you hoped, it’s a great opportunity to totally change it up this year!

It’s important to ask for feedback at the end of your program or at the end of the year if you run wellness programs for the entire year. You can use that feedback to track outcomes and also to help plan your next employee wellness program and make it better than the last.

How big is the company?

The size of your company directly relates to your employees’ experience in your corporate wellness program. If your company is enterprise-sized, it might be better to break down your programming to a departmental level. For example, if you want to host a step challenge it could be tempting to have a large step count goal and push the same messaging to everyone to add their steps to the collective goal. However, this can seem impersonal and not be very motivating on an individual level. If instead you had departments or smaller teams with their own goals or even competing against each other, that has the potential to increase participation rates.

If you have a smaller company such as a new start-up, you can make your programming even more specific towards your employees. For example, if you know a good number of your employees enjoy cycling in their free time you can have a bike-to-work week as part of your wellness initiative. You can even offer free bike rentals one day to encourage others who don’t usually cycle to participate. This shared activity also creates something to talk about between co-workers, helping build company culture. With a smaller company, you have the option of making your wellness programs even more personal which ultimately will make your employees enjoy the program and participate more.

Are there going to be prizes?

A great way to incentivize your employees to participate is to have prizes or some type of reward for their participation. Be sure to think about what your employees really want – what will really motivate them to participate? Fitness products as prizes could be great to encourage healthier lifestyles (think Fitbits, gym memberships, weights or yoga mats). But you could also use workplace incentives. For example, maybe everyone who checks into 4 workout classes in a month gets a pass to wear a more casual type outfit on a non-Friday. Or the top stepper in your step challenge gets to take a half-day.

Big prizes for top employees aren’t the only way to motivate, however. You can do micro-rewards or a point-based system so that everyone feels like they have a chance to earn something. For example, for every 10,000 steps completed in a day, your employees can earn 5 points and once they reach 150 points they can redeem their points for a reward.

Employee recognition also is a great motivator. Even just announcing top participants in your weekly meetings can make employees feel good about themselves and want to participate more.

How can we make living a healthy lifestyle easier for our employees?

It’s important to think of how you can make living a healthy life an easier choice for your employees. This can require some creativity when brainstorming what areas of wellness you want to incorporate into your workplace. Some ideas are: having healthy snack options in the break room, making sure your catered meetings have healthy meal options, not having meetings run past 4:30 to ensure adequate home hours, having meditation rooms available or having more social events to improve company culture and social wellbeing. 

When thinking of ideas start with an area of wellness you want to focus on – mental, physical, social – and go from there.

What is Social Wellness?

Humans naturally crave social connection. Familial bonds, close friendships and romantic relationships all play a part in maintaining healthy social connections in our lives. However, social wellbeing expands beyond just our close relationships. Social wellbeing is a sense of belonging to a community and making a contribution to society. It involves the ability to build personal connections with others, deal with conflict and be a part of a positive social network. 

Since we spend much of our time at work, how we interact with our co-workers plays a huge role in our social wellbeing. Also, as an employee, your work is a large piece of how you contribute to society. So it is important employees feel that what they are doing is meaningful. All of this is encompassed in social wellness.

Why is Social Wellness Important?

The effects of poor social wellness (such as loneliness and isolation) take a toll on our mental and physical health. Some ways loneliness can manifest into health issues include: 

• Cognitive decline
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Substance use & addiction
• Increased difficulty controlling high blood pressure & diabetes

According to one study out of Brigham Young University, the effects of poor social connection are:

• Equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day
• Equivalent to being an alcoholic
• More harmful than not exercising
• Twice as harmful as obesity

What Does Social Wellness Look Like in the Workplace?

Now that we know what poor social wellness looks like, let’s look at how healthy relationships help in the workplace. In addition to all the health benefits already discussed, a 2017 Gallup survey observed that having close work friendships boosted employee satisfaction by 50%. Satisfied employees are more productive and creative employees. According to the HR company, Rise, social connection fosters:

• Higher self-esteem
• Trust and cooperation
• Greater empathy for others
• Team performance
• Development of assertiveness skills in place of passive or aggressive ones
• Treating all people with respect
• The ability to create boundaries within relationships that encourage communication, trust, assertiveness skills & conflict management
• Being in a social space that allows for fun, laughter, and encouragement

When employees feel that they are part of a larger community, they take more responsibility for their work and are more engaged. The overall major benefit of fostering a workplace community is having happier, less stressed and more productive employees.

How to Encourage Social Wellbeing at Work

Employee Recognition

When employees are recognized for their achievements or good work, it promotes positivity, ties their work to a bigger goal, and encourages employees to compliment each other’s work, promoting relationship building. 

Provide Social Opportunities

Create environments where employees can socialize naturally without any financial cost to them. This can include after-work events like sports games, company picnics or holiday parties. Or it can be more work-focused like company off-site workshops. Another great way to encourage social engagement is through volunteering opportunities.

Connect to a Bigger Goal

Give employees a few paid days a year to volunteer at a charity of their choice. Provide charitable payroll contributions that your employees can opt into. If your company is helping the greater good, it makes employees feel they are making a difference as well. 

Team Development over Personal Development

A 2015 study found employees with low levels of autonomy felt more lonely. To combat this, avoid micromanaging and allow for flexible scheduling. In addition, employers should focus on developing team problem-solving skills over individual ones. Having employees work together to find solutions instead of going at it alone or having little control over their work, leads to healthier, happier and more social workplaces.

Use Your Wellness Initiative

If you have a wellness initiative that focuses on physical health, you can use it to also promote social wellness. For example, creating teams to compete against each other in a step challenge instead of competing as individuals encourages social interaction among team members. For more ideas on promoting social wellness with your company fitness challenge check out this blog post.