14 ways to drive well-being program participation

Get all employees involved in their well-being and employee experience

Well-being is not a benefit — it’s core to our human experience. Treating well-being as a benefit, where only certain employees are offered tools, support, and resources to invest in their well-being can have a negative impact on how employees perceive their organizations. Investing in employees and providing equitable opportunities to support their well-being demonstrates care and creates an inclusive environment. 

Measure all aspects of whole person well-being

The Well-Being Assessment is essential to the Limeade experience and providing employees with the support they need. Delivering the entire assessment provides more insights and opportunities as to what matters in overall well-being and experience. The more data you have at your fingertips, the better you can target relevant content to employees based on their needs in the moment. 

Personalize the experience with MyChoice activities

Whole-person well-being is a journey not a destination — where each employee has different priorities. Personalized experiences can motivate employees to interact with relevant resources that support individual success. MyChoice allows for autonomy and choice in what employees want to work on to feel good and live with purpose.

Mix your incentives, and don’t over-emphasize monetary rewards 

To maximize sustained participation, it’s important to provide a mixture of meaningful rewards for employees. When companies use intrinsically meaningful incentives to support employee well-being, there’s more consistent average weekly activity usage in their program. While leveraging extrinsic rewards can be helpful for captivating awareness and driving initial boosts in registration and participation, average weekly participation trends are not associated with offering monetary rewards (e.g., a healthcare premium discount). Using insurance or healthcare related rewards are often viewed by employees as a negative versus supportive action. 

Tips:

• Reinvest dollars to fund other rewards that help employees take care of themselves more often, such as PTO or well-being days.
• Acts of service and societal impacts can be a powerful motivator. Use funds to support charitable donations or matching employee donations.
• Autonomy and choice are key to feeling purpose in what we do and how we achieve goals. Offer gift cards or provide options for other rewards or swag.

Keep content fresh and notify employees

Limeade customer trends show that participation spikes during activity cycles, and users who participate in activities in their program are less likely to leave their company.

Having new content more often, including those that promote team challenges, helps to drive consistent participation. Six- to eight-week cycles tend to yield more consistent participation over time, compared to quarterly or annual cycles. Creating awareness by prompting employees about new content helps to significantly boost participation rates. 

Tips:

• Team Activities
• Automatic notifications around new activities (Smart notifications)

Run multiple ‘refer a colleague’ campaigns throughout the year

Limeade customer trends indicate that over two thirds of users tend to register within the first 90 days of eligibility. There’s no better way to increase awareness than to engage your employees in supporting each other. Create a network effect with the invite a colleague extension and using multiple communication methods. 

Tips:

• Invite a Colleague Campaign
• Program Launch Email
• Mid-Way Reminder Email
• Flyers, Posters, Virtual Backgrounds

Create community using social features

According to i4cp (2020), high-performance organizations live the “we are stronger than me” mantra—they emphasize the power of relationships and social well-being. They are three times more likely to have online social communities related to well-being and two times more likely to design well-being programs to leverage collaboration. 

Participation spikes with campaigns and activities that promote social connection and sharing of meaningful moments. Nearly half of Limeade customers leverage recognition tools to value and support one another. 

Tips:

• Post to Social
• Weekend Challenge
• Well-being Moment
• Send a Cheers

Create a hub for employees to access resources

Tools and resources are an essential component to helping and supporting employees. Limeade customer data shows that when companies curate resources in the Limeade app experience, employees participate more regularly.

Curate your resources through extensions, to provide ‘one place’ for employees to go. 

Tips:

• Company Resources
• Benefit Wallet
• Important Contacts

Make it easy for employees to provide feedback and ideas

Listening is a way to reach and connect with employees. Limeade data shows that using polls and surveys to understand employee experience and gather feedback is strongly related to average weekly activity usage.

Drive participation by asking employees about their experience, providing avenues to solicit feedback anytime and get their ideas. Make it clear to employees how feedback was used to make a change or improvement on their behalf. 

Tips:

• Ask HR
• Suggest an Activity
• Custom Pulse Surveys

Strengthen your people strategies by creating custom campaigns and activities

The more avenues to communicate, the more people will participate as it increases awareness and drives employees to useful information and resources. 

Promote your Champion Network through communications and activities 

Once you’ve established your champion or ambassador program, ongoing support is critical. According to i4cp (2020), high-performance organizations are also four times more likely to leverage champions to promote well-being. Limeade customer trends show that Champions help promote whole-person well-being, employee engagement, inclusion and build a great place to work. 

Tips:

• Become a Champion Activity
• Ask a Champion Submission (extension)

Empower multiple writers to keep the experience relevant

While company benefits and news are nice to know — often, company-wide and local content doesn’t resonate with employees or bring users back into the platform. The more personal and relevant the message is, users will tend to see more value and feel that the experience is tailored for them. 

Enlist leaders to sponsor activities and be vocal

A consistent top driver of employee engagement is senior leaders’ ability to create excitement for the future of the organization. Limeade customer data indicates that average weekly activity usage tends to be higher when company leaders sponsor activities.

In 2020, the registration percentage in the Limeade book of business was eight points higher among companies with above average “My leaders inspire me” scores, than in companies with lower than average “My leaders inspire me” scores.

Strengthen your employee resource groups with targeted communication and activities

Employee Resource Groups (ERGs) — groups led by employees — are a powerful way to foster an inclusive workplace where commonalities and differences are embraced. Leveraging communications tools and activities to support the efforts of ERGs can generate more awareness and connectively across the organization.

To learn more, download our Top Practices for Driving Participation Guide