Why Aren't Employees Participating?

If your employees aren’t aware of your well-being program, they will not participate.

Participation is one of the most common challenges organizations face when launching well-being initiatives. If you want to change the lives of your employees, you have to get them “in the door” first.

We spend a lot of time on helping organizations effectively improve the awareness of their programs. We will address a few observations in this issue, but the prevalence of this issue warrants a much deeper discussion.

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So, a lack of awareness can generally be attributed to two things:

You don’t have your program marketing in high visibility places or you aren’t making enough touch points.

If your well-being program isn’t marketed in high visibility areas, you run the risk of your promotions being missed.

Squeezing in a few sentences at the end of an employee newsletter isn’t going to generate enough awareness. Your marketing has to be highly visible to see a real uptick in participation.

For some of you, your internal communication guidelines don’t allow you to place your program marketing in traditional high visibility areas more than a couple of times per year.

If this is the case, you have to get creative.

What are the variables you can manipulate?

What are the levers you have access to pull?

Here’s a great strategy you can use to get around program marketing restrictions:

If you have a well-being champions team, they can be your affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketing is all about using the power of peer relationships for promotion.

We can combine this with something called peak moments, or rare moments where an individual is more likely to remember their experiences.

Have a well-being champion responsible for each department or location’s new hires. During the new hire’s first day, the well-being champion would be responsible for introducing themselves to the new hire and explaining how the organization values their well-being and has a program they can participate in. They should also take that time to walk the employee through registration for the program.

The employee is more likely to remember that conversation because it occurred during a peak moment, their first day of a new job. They have also just made a connection with an ambassador for your organization that is committed to building a supportive culture.

Your well-being champion is instantly granted authority in the new employee’s mind and will improve the effectiveness of their messaging down the line.

Our second concern is getting enough touchpoints with each employee.

In your life, how many times do you have to hear something before you recognize it might be important and you stop to listen? Twice? Five times? Ten times?

It’s probably higher than you think.

When you’re communicating internally, employees need to hear your messaging over and over again to soak it in.

There’s a concept in neuroscience called Synaptic Strengthening that demonstrates this.

On a neurological level, repetition strengthens the connection between neurons. Each time we are exposed to information, it triggers chemical changes at those connection points, called synapses. This makes it easier for the neural pathway to activate in the future. Over time, this process consolidates the message into a long-term memory.

Employees need to be exposed to your well-being program’s messaging repeatedly to internalize it. We recommend a multi-channel approach that weaves together many different types of communications, such as print, digital and verbal.

1 email + 1 message in a Slack/Microsoft Teams Channel +1 poster hung in a common area + managers leading off their weekly meeting with a quick announcement about the upcoming initiative > 4 emails.

Surrounding employees with the same message in different places will elicit a stronger response than multiple follow ups in one channel.

We also recommend keeping your messaging consistent and highly optimized for the behavior you want to inspire, such as promoting the participation in a particular initiative or registration for your well-being platform.

Be clear about what an employee ought to do in your communication. That’s what turns awareness into action.

Implications for the well-being administrator:

• To improve awareness of your well-being program, ensure marketing is visible in high-traffic areas and utilize creative strategies like using well-being champions to overcome communication restrictions.

• Leverage peak moments to make a memorable introduction to the program, enhancing the likelihood of participation through personal connections.

• Utilize a multi-channel approach with consistent messaging across various platforms to strengthen neural connections, ensuring employees repeatedly encounter and internalize the information.

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