Employees are the best assets for any organization, which makes their health and wellness a top priority. According to a survey 9 out of 10 employees have reported that work stress affects their mental health which may lead to reduced productivity and efficiency.
Thus, as an employer, it becomes your responsibility to introduce a good employee health and wellness platform at your workplace. In this article, we’re going to explore wellness tools in detail hoping they’ll help you choose one for your organization.
What is an Employee Wellness Program?
An employee wellness program is a corporate initiative that works towards enhancing employees’ lives and helping them achieve work-life balance. These programs encourage the employees to focus on things other than work such as meditation, mindful thinking, etc., which would reduce their stress and improve overall wellbeing. It has been observed that a stress-free employee is less likely to make errors while working.
Do Wellness Programs Really Work?
Various studies have shown that wellness programs work and help employees with managing their stress and anxiety. It has also been observed that there’s a significant reduction in absenteeism as employees are more likely to come to the office due to the happier and livelier environment this program fashions.
Let’s check out some stats to back our claim-
- 77% of employees state that the health & wellness program is “moderately” or “very” effective.
- According to a survey, 8.3 to 13.6% of employees are more likely to be engaged in physical exercise if they’re participating in a corporate wellness program.
- More than 81% of large corporations offer wellness programs to their employees.
Wellness programs do work and promote a healthier lifestyle for employees which leads to better productivity and office environment. It’s a win-win for both employees and employers.
Benefits of Wellness Programs
There are a lot of benefits of introducing a wellness program at your corporate workplace-
- Reduced Stress- Wellness tools promote mindfulness which leads to a reduction of stress in employees. When employees are less stressed and leading a better life than it by default promotes better morale, less absenteeism, and more productivity.
- Reduced Costs- When your employees have a work-life balance and lead a healthier lifestyle then they are less likely to face severe sickness which saves the corporate a lot of money on healthcare plans.
- Increased Productivity- Employee wellness programs lead to increased productivity as happier and healthier employees are more likely to stay present and active during working hours.
- Stronger workplace relationships- Having wellness platforms in the workplace creates a peaceful environment which reduces employees’ irritability and other negative emotions which leads to stronger workplace relationships.
Evaluation Criteria for Wellness Platforms
Let’s discuss the evaluation criteria that you must look for while selecting a wellness platform for your organization-
- User Interface (UI)– The main aim of a wellness platform is to evoke a sense of well-being in users by employing friendly graphics, a simple navigation setup, and a clean interface. If the platform has an interface that’s too cluttered, then it negates the whole point of a wellness app platform. It can lead to generating a feeling of unease or anxiousness in users instead of bringing them calm and peace.
- Usability– One important criterion that a good wellness platform must meet is usability. It is essential that the administrators as well as the employees must be able to learn the tool with minimum effort from their end. If a tool is too difficult to learn or navigate, then there are high chances of people abandoning it.
- Integrations– Employee wellness platforms must meet the criteria of connecting to other enterprise tools for activities such as performance monitoring, communication tools, training management, KPI reporting, employee databases, etc. When an organization is investing in any tool, they need to make sure that they’re getting the most out of it. If one app tool in your organization does not connect to others, then it proves to be quite frustrating for both the employer as well as the employees.
- Value for the price– No organization would want to spend more money on something that they’re getting out of it. That’s why you must look for a platform that gives you value for your money. Make sure to look out for transparent and fair pricing, free trials plans, and easy scalability.
Key Features of Wellness Platforms
Let’s discuss the features that must be present in a good wellness platform-
- Health Monitoring- It’s important to look for a tool that has a health monitoring built-in feature. This monitor should be able to access users’ health to be able to formulate a customized wellness plan according to their particular needs or deficiencies.
- Content Library– It should also come with a built-in content library where the user can find helpful videos, articles, and instructions to help them through their wellness journey.
- Gamification– is an essential feature in any platform nowadays. Having different types of gamification or social elements in any tool builds a feeling of excitement in the users. People are more likely to enjoy the tools with such features in place.
- Incentives & Rewards- Finally, it’s important that your wellness app tool has a built-in rewards and incentives system. This is a form of validating someone for achieving something or reaching a milestone in their wellness journey.
Top 10 Employees Health and Wellness Platforms
1. Headversity
Headversity is a platform for building the resilience and mental health of the workforce. Their proactive approach is assisting companies all over the world to create a psychologically secure work environment and position their personnel to overcome challenges.
Headversity has assisted more than 500k employees in over 22 countries worldwide in upskilling resilience, behavioral health, and psychological safety so they can think, feel, and be their best. This has been done with the help of an industry-first blended learning system that integrates individual and team training with platform intelligence.
Headversity provides a free trial and price information upon request.
2. Sprout
Sprout is a platform for workplace wellness that motivates users to take a greater interest in their health and happiness through gamification features and community involvement. Its rewards and incentives scheme can encourage individuals to work toward their health objectives. Users of Sprout have access to a vast collection of educational articles and videos about making healthy decisions, exercising smarter, participating in events and challenges in the community, and creating goals.
If you want an employee wellness platform with a health risk assessment tool, Sprout is the ideal choice for your business. With the use of activity tracking and biometric screening, Sprout’s HRA offers real-time data. Sprout HRA can aid in the prediction of chronic diseases and motivate staff to seek medical assistance to avoid them. Sprout provides its employees with a health score so they may compare their health to that of others their own age and encourage preventative action.
Prices for sprouts are available upon request. There is a free demo available.
3. Wellable
With the support of wellness-focused challenges and ongoing health monitoring, Wellable is an all-in-one wellness hub that can keep your employees in good health. To give them helpful information or health reminders, you can use Wellable to send emails, push notifications, texts, or flyers. It contains a feature called gamification that encourages competition while making tasks fun.
For a number of interesting topics, including on-demand exercise, hobbies lifestyle (including cooking, wine tasting), and habit objectives, Wellable offers a library of new and archival programs and articles (tobacco cessation). Ensuring there is something for everyone is the best approach to promoting wellness activities, and Wellable excels in this area.
Fitbit, Apple Health, Garmin, and other fitness trackers are all compatible with Wellable.
Pricing for Wellable begins at $75 per user each month with a minimum of 25 users. They provide a risk-free trial.
4. Unmind
Unmind is a corporate wellness platform that provides several different workouts like yoga, meditation, and relaxation techniques. Unmind is a great place for employees to find nutritious recipes, useful information, and tunes for sleep, all of which can encourage positive behavior changes and good habits. You can use Unmind to congratulate coworkers, which will raise morale at the workplace and motivate them to take part in wellness initiatives.
Because Unmind offers self-guided programs that your workers can use, Unmind is the finest employee wellness platform for you if they wish to run their wellness programs independently. The self-guided training from Unmind can aid staff members in enhancing their general wellness, which includes enhancing sleep, controlling anxiety, and lowering stress. Since Unmind’s wellness programs are self-guided, employees can begin and end their programs whenever it is most convenient for them, which makes their journey toward well-being feel more natural.
Prices for Unmind are available upon request.
5. Starling
Starling offers early intervention for depression, anxiety, and stress to increase productivity and lower absenteeism at the workplace. Giving struggling employees prompt assistance might assist your organization in lowering healthcare expenditures. Additionally, Starling offers a Return-to-Health program to help workers who are on sick leave due to a physical or mental ailment recover more quickly.
If your business wants to offer digital therapeutic solutions for stress management, Starling is the ideal employee wellness platform for it. Starling employs customized health solutions to make sure that its employees receive individualized health coaching. This wellness program offers helpful dashboards that allow users to view their current levels of energy, despair, and anxiety and utilize that information as a roadmap for the program’s next steps.
Requests for Starling pricing will be honored.
6. Woliba
Woliba is a wellness tool that fosters collaboration among staff members from various departments by using challenges. Through nourishing meals tailored to the health plans and dietary requirements of the staff, this corporate wellness solution can assist your employees in developing better eating habits. Users of Woliba can watch fitness videos to promote exercise and movement both within and outside of the office.
I suggest Woliba if you want your staff to learn how they can improve their own health because it offers a huge collection of informative articles on topics like stress management, strength training, and quitting smoking. Employees have access to a vast collection of materials and tests that they may use to gauge their understanding of what they’ve learned. Woliba also makes use of gamification to boost staff engagement in wellness initiatives and maintain employee motivation.
Woliba offers a 30-day free trial and its price starts at $75 per user per month for a minimum of 25 members.
7. Limeade
Limeade offers a wellness program that can help your business enhance the general health and happiness of your staff. It contains dashboards with vital information you can use to take care of workers to avoid burnout and raise retention rates. It includes built-in communication capabilities that allow it to deliver notifications and target particular staff groups.
Regardless of ethnicity or cultural background, corporate health and wellness should benefit all employees. If you’re looking for a wellness platform that values inclusion then you must go for Limeade. It offers expert translation services, making it the perfect choice for businesses with multiracial staff. By localizing wellness initiatives, Limeade makes sure that wellness programs apply to staff members working in different locations or time zones.
Prices for limeade are available upon request.
8. Kona
Using real-time information on mental health, you can prevent burnout and take appropriate action using the employee wellness platform Kona. Through talks that enhance teamwork at work, you may use Kona to encourage team engagement. Team managers can use Kona to jot down ideas for wellness-improving tactics that will benefit their group.
For the hectic workplace of today, Kona offers smart burnout avoidance measures. Modern digital product teams from Nextdoor, Aircall, Asana, Medium, and Help Scout presently use them. To determine the likelihood of burnout, they use red-amber-green (RAG) status updates, and when sentiment starts to deteriorate, they send team leads personalized alerts.
A 14-day free trial is available from Kona, and pricing is available upon request.
9. Calm
Using the employee wellness program Calm, your business may help employees feel better by promoting better sleep, lowering anxiety and stress, and enhancing mental health. It makes use of a potent analytics functionality to assist you in learning more about your staff and achieving a productive office environment. Users of calm have access to online conferences and webinars where they may learn more about how to better care for themselves.
We suggest Calm if you’re searching for a wellness platform with a robust mobile app your employees can use outside of the office. The mobile app for Calm offers breathing exercises, a mindfulness program, and guided meditations to help workers stay focused and de-stress. In order to reduce anxiety, workers can utilize Calm as a guide to conduct simple physical activities like stretching and relaxation-inducing exercises.
The first user fee for Calm is $58.37 per year. A seven-day free trial is available.
10. Headspace
Through better sleep, appropriate exercise, and meditation, businesses may enhance health and happiness by utilizing Headspace. It provides a dashboard for employees so you can monitor their general wellness and administer wellness programs as necessary. Additionally, users have access to hundreds of meditations and exercises that could aid in reducing stress, anxiety, and burnout.
The work plan from Headspace includes a business-grade analytics suite that can assess user engagement based on the type of content, the level of engagement per active user, the most popular courses accessed or completed, and membership enrolment. Employers have access to a customized dashboard with a wide range of measurement tools.
Pricing for the Headspace business plan is accessible upon request.
Conclusion
One of the main reasons for absenteeism and burnout at the workplace is high work-related stress. Thus, it’s important to introduce health & wellness programs to help employees achieve overall well-being.
