Wellness coaching has become a common tool in the arsenal of employee health and wellbeing programs. The concept is simple: employees are assigned a wellness coach who helps them achieve personal goals around diet, exercise and self-care to improve their physical health. The idea is that by improving these habits, employees will be better equipped to handle life’s stressors and make healthy choices on their own.

Workplaces that embrace employee wellness programs have found a range of benefits, from reduced absenteeism and improved productivity to higher morale and lower healthcare costs. But the most significant and lasting impact is often in employee mental health, according to Mind Share Partners 2021 Mental Health at Work Report. The key to addressing mental health in the workplace requires top-down and bottom-up change, including employee and manager training to reduce stigma, organizational-wide efforts to create connection and supportive cultures and policies, investing in diversity, equity and inclusion and offering the right benefits, programs and services.

A good wellness program can help employees feel more supported and confident about taking control of their own health and wellbeing, but it’s important to ensure that it is tailored for each individual. Whether you are working with small groups or individual employees, you need to have a strong elevator pitch in place for each situation. This will give you the ability to quickly and effectively motivate employees to participate, gain management support or pitch an employee wellness program to a leadership group.

The best employer-sponsored wellness programs are those that focus on both the physical and the mental health of their employees. This includes providing on-site gyms, smoking cessation incentives, healthier snack options and more. Mental health initiatives can include meditation, mindfulness training, and other strategies to help employees manage their stress levels and improve their work-life balance.

When designing a wellness program, it’s essential to have robust tools and systems in place that can track the success of the initiative. Quenza’s wellness coaching software offers a great example of these tools, which allow health and wellbeing coaches to easily build home exercise programs, behavioral assessments, Occupational Therapy interventions and more. Real-time results tracking allows coaches to keep on top of their client’s progress, ensuring accountability and engagement.

The key to a successful wellness program is showing your team that you care and are proud of their achievements. This can be done with trips, local outings, in-office parties or a quick shout-out in the company newsletter. IT giant Cisco knows the value of celebrating the success of its teams, which is why each team is allocated a fun fund that can be used to celebrate their successes. employee wellness coaching