Why Do Some Healthy Behaviors Stick While Other Don't?

Have you ever struggled to understand why one healthy behavior takes root while another fails miserably?

Why does someone start and continue eating 2 servings of vegetables daily yet struggle to get out the door to be active?

What is behind the ability to live healthy one way, yet feel so unable to do it in another realm?

Leaders within organizational well-being and benefits programs must concern themselves with this kind of question. We’re often promoting healthy living across the board for colleagues without giving thought to why some of our recommendations succeed while others fail.

Was the cooking demonstration a bust just because we see four attendees continue to eat out every day for lunch?

Did we present the wrong content?

The end goal for a corporate-backed well-being program is (or at least should be) the motivation of employees toward sustained behavior change. For something to be truly impactful, it must alter our behavior longer than a day or two. It has to take root in our lives.

Why is that?

Motivation isn’t reliable.

Programming focused on improving motivation can see results - in the short-term.

The scenario happens far too often.

We run an initiative focused on something, we’ll use better sleep as an example, and give employees access to sleep health resources or tools to help them sleep better.

They get excited, feel motivated by the new information, tools, or maybe the underlying message.

We hear good things. They use the tools and start trying the techniques.

Then our busy season hits.

Suddenly schedules are different, workloads are up, and pressure to perform rises.

Now, motivation has faded. We see our programming recommendations fall by the wayside. The great tips and tools we once had have become a thing of the past.

The truth is, we never established a repetitive or anchored process. We relied too heavily on motivation to change behavior.

Motivation fluctuates. Habits endure.

Employees motivation levels vary daily due to workload, stress, and external pressures.

Habits, on the other hand, operate below conscious awareness. This allows well-being behaviors to persist even during demanding periods.

Employee well-being programming must be designed for habits to form, not simply motivation to increase. Without habit formation, behavior change will always be temporary.

👉Next week, we’ll take a look at how habit formation relates to our goals and its implications for the type of well-being programming you need to be running to see real progress.

Propel designs well-being programming as habit formation infrastructure by combining corporate culture and behavioral economics with robust technology that makes it possible to see sustainable change at scale. If you want to learn more about how Propel works, take a look here.

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