When Was Your Last Wellness Motivation Meeting?

  • May 15, 2012

Austin, Texas: Changing human behavior takes time.

Many studies show that it takes 30 days of daily practice to change a behavior, such as exercising, eating rituals, etc.

So, how do you expect your employees to make significant and meaningful changes to their wellness and health with one kickoff meeting and no followup?

Yet, that is what most health and wellness programs seem to do.

What a waste!

Wasted opportunity, because many of your employees are willing to try to change.

Wasted time in all those wellness planning committees, board approval meetings and other time and energy that was expended in order to launch a wellness program in the first place.

Wasted chances to reignite your wellness program.

The easiest way to keep your program fresh and alive is to have consistent wellness meetings, which can do several things:

  • – to keep your employees posted on how everybody is doing (peer pressure works very well)
  • – to let employees know about new updates to the program
  • – to explain new features of your wellness program
  • – to gather feedback and suggestions
  • – to reinforce management’s commitment
  • – to keep the program “top of mind”

At WellnessIncentivesPlus.com, we decided to spend less time on creating wellness programs and more time on wellness reminders and wellness rewards, since we know that is the most critical area that determines the success of your wellness program. It is better to spend $10-$20 on a series of imprinted wellness reminder gifts, such as imprinted pedometers, imprinted sports bottles, imprinted gym bags, imprinted wellness guides and imprinted T-shirts than it is to create a $20 incentive level.

One reminder every few days will go a long way to drilling your wellness theme and program into their minds and not letting them forget about it as time goes on.

There is no point designing intricate point programs and levels of fitness goals if there is no consistent push from the beginning.

Don’t “love ’em and leave ’em”.

Have daily or weekly reminders for your employees – whether it be email reminders, wellness guides, imprinted stress balls, imprinted pedometers or jump ropes or other reminder, mixed with meetings to inspire and to reinforce.

The first 30 days of your wellness program are the most crucial. That will be the make it or break it period for the program. If you cannot get your employees to spend the next 30 days changing their old behaviors, then the program will be a failure.

Talk to each employee. See what makes them tick.

Be visible.

Make the program fun — even silly.

Keep it fresh.

And, keep having meetings until the new, healthier behaviors become the new norm.

Here’s to a Healthier Workforce!


  • Category: Wellness Programs
  • Tags: imprinted pedometers, wellness gifts, wellness meetings, wellness programs, wellness reminders