A group of women doing exercise

Exercise Care

In Recognition and Engagement by Lori McKnight

Exercise Care

Organizations investing in employee wellbeing and recognition have healthier cultures and better business results

Wellness is a hot topic these days. You’ve likely witnessed the above headline in emails, webinar invites, press releases and whitepapers.

For those of us living in a first world country the biggest threat to our wellbeing is stress. Stress wreaks havoc on our emotional and physical health and can stifle an organization’s productivity. Many of our excuses and bad habits stem from stress, such as “I need a smoke” or “I don’t have the time to exercise or eat well”. You’ve heard or used them yourself.

Why invest in Wellness?

Organizations and employees are stretched and stressed with the reality of increased competition and more pressure to exceed customer expectations.

Research from Gallup , PWC, Josh Bersin amongst others provides no shortage of evidence that cultivating a healthier workforce results in:

  • increased productivity;
  • less absenteeism;
  • fewer workers’ compensation and disability claims;
  • reduced insurance premiums;
  • enhanced recruitment and retention of health-conscious employees;
  • decreased rates of injury;
  • improved employee relations and morale

In our last wellness blog we provided three tips to consider before launching a new wellness program.

As a follow up to those insights, we’d like to go deeper into how a wellness program works and the results you can expect.

Tips to consider before launching a new wellness program

How we help your employees get moving

CSI STARS has a mobile optimized recognition platform that can blend wellness activities with performance-based recognition to improve employees’ lives AND business results.

Once you’ve pinpointed the right wellness incentive program to launch in your organization (read how), CSI STARS supports your wellness initiative by integrating with your wellness program provider.

Our Capabilities

Employee Wellness

Integration

CSI STARS platform allows for a tailored program that integrates your HRIS database and pulls data from 3rd party wellness companies.

This integration makes participation easy as employees use one log on to see their stats and results. The beauty of the CSI STARS platform is that all recognition programs including our Service Awards Plus social recognition, safety or other points for performance programs, are housed on this one platform so all activity is accessible from a central hub.

By incorporating your wellness points onto a single platform, you will create synergy across ALL your point programs and additional motivation to participate and earn. Now employees can enjoy greater reward opportunities because all of their points can be redeemed on one system.

Benchmarking

Most employers will tell you they believe their wellness programs are effective but quite often they can’t quantify the results.

CSI STARS incentive tools can encourage employees to complete an HRA or biometric assessment before participating in a wellness initiative. This data provides a baseline so employers and employees can see how changing habits have made a difference at six months and 12 months later.

Gamification

In addition to awarding points for all activities, you may want to have some fun with gamification. CSI STARS system allows employees to earn game tokens for their participation in wellness initiatives.

Employers can create daily or weekly mini challenges that give employees a chance to earn game tokens that may result in a point award. This is a great tool for driving lots of activity while ensuring you don’t go over budget.

Gamification helps maintain the momentum of your program by keeping employees motivated and engaged.

Social Recognition

Your wellness programs may use leading-edge technology but people are always at the center of every well-designed wellness initiative.

CSI STARS creates a personalized recognition dashboard to celebrate your employees’ achievement of mini challenges and overall goals. Colleagues enjoy congratulating and encouraging one another to keep up the good work. If part of our Service Awards with social recognition or other performance programs, this dashboard streams important milestone events such as birthdays and anniversaries AND promotes when employees do the things aligned with your core values.

Reporting and Results

CSI STARS comprehensive reporting capability provides analytics to help our clients evaluate all of their employee recognition programs, including wellness.

Motivating new healthy behaviors can be financially quantified by a reduction in your organization’s yearly benefit premiums or cost-sharing fees as employees who participate achieve improved health outcomes.

A win-win for all!

Author: Lori McKnight

Lori McKnight
Lori is the VP of Recognition for CSI International Inc. She has a MBA with a minor in Human Resources, is a Certified Recognition Professional and member of the SHRM blog squad. Prior to joining CSI STARS, she worked at Mercer Human Resource Consulting and Youthography, a youth market research agency. Connect with CSI STARS on LinkedIn to learn how we cultivate a workforce that loves coming to work.