Establishing Your Well-being Program's Vision

In this issue, we discuss a fundamental step every program manager must take for their well-being program to succeed.

Not taking this step has contributed to many organizations downsizing or even discontinuing their well-being programming due to a lack of results.

If you haven’t already, download our free eBook: The Strategic Framework for Integrating Culture Into Employee Well-being.

In this resource, you’ll be able to follow the framework that we follow for our clients to create culture-rich well-being programs. You’ll also get access to some great downloadable tools and bonus content, like these Vision Statement Prompts.

Finally, if you’d like to set up some time with us to see how Propel can help you dramatically accelerate your well-being program and hit your goals faster, you can schedule a free, 30-minute strategy session with us here.

The importance of a vision in your program’s success

Vision is the bullseye on the dart board. Without it, we are aiming at the air.

Your well-being program needs a vision that inspires you to push harder. It needs a vision that optimizes your effort and rewards your diligence.

Your program’s vision will be the guiding star for all initiatives your run. Without it, your program will be in serious jeopardy of failing.

At Propel, we have worked with many clients over our two decades in business. The clients that simply wanted to check the box with their well-being program to show that they “offered something” were the ones who frequently failed to build something that captivated employees.

Your job as a well-being program administrator is to be the captain of your program’s vision.

Your leadership team may set the vision and it’s your job to execute on it. If that is the case, that’s excellent. This should hopefully inspire you to adopt, internalize, and become energized by that vision.

You may be the one creating the vision for your well-being program. In that case, take this challenge seriously. Put your heart and soul into creating a meaningful vision for your organization and for your program.

That vision must be bold, or as Andrew Carnegie puts it:

Why is it so hard to develop this vision?

As your program has come into being, you have likely traded your long-term goals for short-term ones.

There is a constant pressure to perform, displaying results that justify the program’s existence. Those performance metrics frequently become short-term focused because they are the basis for the justification.

Details are important for any well-being program administrator to focus on, but they can distract us from the big picture.

We become so wrapped up in participation and registration numbers that we sometimes forget that our programming isn’t about generating participation - it’s about helping our colleagues build healthier habits that lead to fuller, more fulfilling lives.

Our vision should be about the end results of what our program will bring employees. We’re not running a well-being program to win awards, though that can be a side-effect. We’re running this program to change peoples’ lives for the better.

When we put our vision in this context, it suddenly has much more weight and purpose.

Long-term goals can also be tricky to articulate because they may seem too unrealistic. Your vision for what the well-being program could be may not come anywhere close to what your eyes see today.

It would be great if your colleagues cared about their health, but from what you see today, that doesn’t seem like something that will change.

Don’t worry about the disposition of your colleagues. Your program design can always be structured to break through to them. Be wary of sacrificing a meaningful vision due to present doubts on whether employees will change. Your organization is likely full of individuals who didn’t prioritize certain things until something new came into the picture; a new diagnosis, a new piece of information, a new internal realization.

Ask around for some of these stories if you want reassurance that people can and do change their habits.

Tips to bring your vision to life

Start with the way you want your organization to look in five years. We find that five years is a great timeline to elicit an ideal vision while keeping it realistic.

Ask yourself questions like:

• What cultural changes have occurred?

• How are employees changing their habits?

• Which leaders have become true champions of the well-being program?

Then, move onto incorporating measurable metrics into your vision:

• What percentage of your population will say that their well-being is improving?

• What percentage of your population should be participating in your program?

• What do your organization’s screening or health assessment results look like?

Creating a vision that has both observed and measured changes is important to the health of your well-being program and its long-term success. To see more prompt ideas to inspire your brainstorming, download our Vision Statement Prompts.

Implications for the well-being administrator:

• Your program’s vision will be the guiding star for every initiative and activity you run.

• Without a clear vision, you run the risk of wasting your time with non-essential tasks and short-term focused initiatives that take your organization in a different direction than you originally intended.

• Your vision statement should be clear, with a mix of observed and measured goals that can be reached within five years.

If you like this content, share it with other well-being administrators.

We’re committed to discussing challenges common to well-being leaders and presenting practical solutions that increase the wisdom of all well-being professionals.