A Snapshot from the REBA Wellbeing Congress: How do we Inspire Cultural Change to Improve Uptake of Wellbeing APPS?

There is lots going on in the world of wellbeing at work, as you probably could imagine. Employers are taking much more responsibility for their staff’s health as the REBA Wellbeing Congress in London, UK, demonstrated.

“Wellbeing at Work” is a bit of cliché these days, what we are now looking at is solid “care” of the individual and teams, where saying “thank you” for specific achievements has been researched to improve employee’s health by quite a lot” *.

Expressing our feelings at work has almost been frowned upon for decades but, as Laura Cheeswright says from Unmind – “…with the advent of IS0 45003 Psychological Safety Quality Standard employers are listening more to employee’s mental health needs, especially as it is the most expensive health concern for employers…” *2

But how can this come about? One of the points that was emphasised at the REBA Wellbeing Congress – apart from the need for increased financial wellbeing support – was how “cultural change” needs to take place to improve uptake of the plethora of wellness apps available to employees.

The main issue is not how well the technology-based mindfulness, exercise or psychological tools work but encouraging people to use them!

Uptake of these resourceful APPs can be very low in some organisations, why is that? How can we inspire more to take up the resources that could improve their wellbeing significantly?

How about inspiration from successful wellbeing champions?

Scientific data on the efficacy of the specific treatments and routines?

There are incentives like the “reward or consequences” methodology. Although this seems antiquated it may be relevant for those who would benefit most from the therapy. Often, those with the most resistance often would benefit the most if they could simply try something and maybe even enjoy it or at least understand the cathartic process as beneficial for growth both personally and professionally!

Reward when doing well with great wellbeing-based incentives and incentivise wellbeing practices for personnel who could do with support on improving areas of their life that influences their professional life – a positive inspiration!

Whether its forward or away motivation everyone can respond to a wellbeing practice, it’s just a question of finding the one that works best for your staff on a group (mean average improvement) and one-to-one level.

Make it fun! Without being cliched of course, how about a weekend learning foraging, at a spa retreat and spending some quality time in nature? Offer an alternative for those who are not interested in soft skills at the same spa but a more thought-leadership based approach to empowering ones-selfcare?

In our system we ask our students: “if you could do an exercise for twenty minutes twice a day that would change your life in every way would you do it?” Of course, they say yes!

You will have to backup this claim. Fortunately, we’ve got over 72 random controlled trails demonstrating the efficacy of Taiji and qi gong for a whole range of ailments, not least the natural wear and tear of being a maturing citizen*3.

Of course, financial wellbeing is top of mind right now, but mental and physical health should always come first, you can’t put a price on physical or mental health….

 

References:

 

*: Work Human Derek Irvine speaking about how important saying “thank you” is at the REBA Wellbeing Congress.

*2: Unmind about ISO  standards for psychological wellbeing https://www.iso.org/news/ref2677.html https://blog.unmind.com/iso-45003-blog-series-part-one

Link to 5-minute read - excellent info for how and why to inspire cultural change to improve mental health at work: How Leaders Can Drive a Mentally Healthy Culture 

 *3: Over 72 medical random controlled trails demonstrate to efficacy of Tai Chi and Qi Gong for a range of health benefits and reduction of symptoms of anxiety, stress, and many other  conditions: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3085832/

 

More information about REBA, the UK's trade body for rewards and employee benefits organisations, can be found by clicking here: https://reba.global/