Make sure you get what you need from wellness stakeholders.
It happens all the time. People think that communication is all that’s needed to make something happen in a company.
You know that’s not true. Especially when the topic is wellness. A sustainable and effective Wellness initiative includes strategies and tactics that go beyond communication. It involves decisions about resource allocation, policies, reinforcement and strategic value.
For example, a company may decide that people making better food choices will help reduce absenteeism from chronic conditions (the business objective). Leadership might then change what’s offered in cafeterias and vending machines. They may issue a policy that says company-provided meeting refreshments must meet certain criteria. They may decide to subsidize in-house appointments with a nutritionist. They may decide that employees need more information and education.
Once those kinds of decisions are made, you can start to figure out the best strategies and tactics for communicating about the changes and/or offerings.
But what if those other pieces aren’t in place before someone asks you to start producing communication about wellness?
How do you get what you need without being perceived as a bottleneck or a resistant internal service provider?
The secret is to ask constructive questions while showing the value of the questions.
Question 1: Who “owns” Wellness?
It’s critical to know who has the accountability for Wellness and the extent of their authority. If that’s already clearly established, excellent! You can jump to Question 2.
However, it’s common for there to not be a clear owner. Wellness tends to be one of those initiatives driven by reaction and self-motivated employees who want to help their fellow employees as opposed to a planned and strategic effort by the organization.
No matter what, your goal is make sure you are working with the point person who has the authority and accountability to give you the information and sign-off you need.
So, if the person initiating the request for communication is the owner, ask:
“Will you be the person who can provide me with details and final sign-off on content?”
If the answer is yes, great! They are the owner.
If the answer is no, a natural follow up question is “Who is?”. There are three likely responses:
- “So-and-So.” This is good. You’ll then want to determine how you’ll have access to So-and-So. (Directly, is ideal.)
- “So-and-So and You-Know-Who and I have the details. That Person will approve the content.” This is a red flag situation. With so many people involved, no one has ownership. And whenever that happens in any kind of project, excessive time and energy are spent without the relative results. In this type situation, you’ll want to help the person you’re talking to understand the benefits of streamlining ownership by saying:
“It’s great that so many of you are interested in Wellness. However, it would save us all a lot of time if I could work with one point person. Do you have suggestions on who that could be?” - “I have no idea. I just want to send an email with work-life balance tips to all employees.” Oh-oh. Stop. You’ll want to say something like:
“I think it’s wonderful that you’re looking to help everyone with that. However, if this doesn’t connect with a bigger initiative, one email only adds to general noise and doesn’t do much for the employees or organization. Have you talked to [likely owner of Wellness] to see if this is an issue the organization wants to address?”
Question 2: What’s the objective?
No matter who owns Wellness, there needs to be a business reason for talking about Wellness with the employee population.
If the owner hasn’t made the objective(s) clear, then you need to ask: “What is Our Great Company looking to achieve by [whatever kind of initiative is being discussed]?”
Examples of good objectives:
- Improve engagement scores related to Wellness
- Reduce absenteeism by 10%
- Reduce the number of health claims by 3%
- Enhance reputation as an employer of choice
- Make benefits program more competitive
Examples of bad objectives:
- Appease a senior leader who is on a health kick
- The company where the requestor’s friend/family member works does this kind of thing
If there are good objectives, you can move to the next stage of the conversation.
If there’s only a bad objective, you need to steer the conversation toward business objectives and value.
You might need to elaborate on the question by saying something like: “We can’t communicate with employees on behalf of the organization without there being some business value. Have you talked to HR/Finance/the CEO about Wellness and where it lands on their strategic objectives. Maybe there are issues linked to reputation, absenteeism, health costs or engagement they’d like to address and Wellness is one way to do that.”
Making the conversation about objectives keeps it business-focused and not about you or anyone else. You demonstrate that you’re keeping the company’s best interests in mind, which includes uses employees’ time and attention for the right things.
Question 3: What’s the bigger plan?
Okay, with the objective(s) clear, it’s time to venture into territory that’s a little bit outside of employee communication: what’s the bigger plan? As mentioned at the beginning of this article, creating or maintaining employee wellness requires more than communication to make it work. Ask business-focused probing questions to understand what else the company is doing to achieve the stated objectives. It might be offering training or education, changing the benefits plans, modifying the physical environment, adjusting policies, and so on.
Without that kind of information, you can’t build an effective and meaningful employee communication plan.
And, if nothing is planned, you have the opportunity to help educate your stakeholders. You can let them know that you will create outstanding B2E communication. However, that is likely not enough to achieve the stated objectives.
In many cases, questions about a bigger plan drives the articulation of that bigger plan. It can feel like the tail is wagging the dog but, all told, it’s worthwhile. Just remember to NOT start communicating until those other pieces in place. They are part of what you need for content and usually affect timing.
A Closing Thought
Effective employee communication almost always requires early and behind-the-scenes conversations with stakeholders. Sometimes those conversations can be difficult because you’re asking tough questions.
The good news is that it gets easier with practice. And, the more you respectfully question stakeholders, the more they learn what’s needed for effective employee communication and start to provide it up front.
In other words, there are short-term and long-term benefits to getting what you need from wellness stakeholders.
