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2019 After Action Review and AM Meetings

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Capstone Project - Initial Presentation Powerpoint

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Web survey powered by SurveyMonkey.com. Create your own online survey now with SurveyMonkey's expert certified FREE templates.

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Why Team Based Wellness Interventions Work

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Why Team Based Wellness Interventions Work

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A new Annals of Internal Medicine study examined the impact of financial rewards for weight loss on individuals and groups. Not surprisingly (at least to us), when rewards are based on the group's performance rather than just the individual's results, participants lose substantially more weight.

What's discouraging is the researchers completely missed the point. The cash rewards likely had very little to do with the success of participants on teams, but rather the group dynamics of being accountable to others.

At HES we have more than 15 years experience with team-based wellness campaigns, and a recent review of our 2009-2012 programs without the influence of financial rewards showed these results:

24% increase in participation when team participation is offered

53% increase in evaluation completion for individuals on teams vs. those participating on their own

57% increase in achievement of health goal for those on teams vs. those participating on their own.

When done well, team-based wellness competitions and buddy features are naturally fun and social - infusing the hard work of behavior change with a sense of enjoyment and play. The shared experience of working together toward a challenging goal strengthens relationships, bolsters accountability, and gives each member a tremendous amount of support.

In our white paper - Team Wellness Challenges: Energizing Engagement, Inspiring Change - we highlight how business, social, and health research suggests a team-based approach offers great potential for enhancing wellness program effectiveness:

The power of positive influence. Simply observing others working toward a goal can motivate people to pursue the same goal, whether or not they realize it. This effect is most potent when people share a group. The typical workplace is full of groups - departments, units, functions, as well as physical work areas - giving team-based wellness initiatives a familiar format.

All together now. By aiming for similar wellness goals - such as being more active or eating more produce - wellness team members reinforce the behaviors in each other. Because team success requires individual success, members become mutually accountable for staying on track.

Contributing to something larger. There's a reason community volunteering and sports teams are so widespread. People enjoy working alongside others with similar interests to reach a target - and feel they're contributing to something bigger than themselves. It happens in the workplace, too. Studies show that employees are more likely to make a positive contribution to the organization if they're part of a team and feel their work plays a role in group performance. In The Wisdom of Teams, Katzenbach and Smith describe it this way: "The deepest, most satisfying source of enjoyment comes from having been part of something larger than myself."

A sense of belonging. In addition to autonomy and competence, a strong kindred feeling is a key element of intrinsic motivation, whether for work performance or wellness behaviors. Team membership cultivates group identification and cohesiveness - and keeps the goals in focus. As team relationships are strengthened, members are more likely to learn from each other, also raising effectiveness.

Better wellness engagement and outcomes. A statewide team-based program resulted in weight loss (.8-1.2 BMI units), with obesity falling from 39% to 31% by the end of the study. In reviewing the literature on weight loss competitions, researchers concluded that team competition was more effective than individual competition in improving both participation and weight loss outcomes.

Built-in social support. A 10-month weight loss study found recruiting people along with 3 friends in a strong social support intervention decreased the number of dropouts - and pushed up the percentage of those maintaining weight loss over 6 months - compared to those recruited alone. Team members also had a 33% greater weight loss at 10 months than those recruited alone.

While adding cash to the equation of team-based wellness interventions can appear to drive success, you run the risk of changing the internal dynamic from "this is something I want to do for my team and myself" to "I'm doing this for the money." And while that may work in the short term, the evidence is clear that financial rewards don't improve long-term health behaviors (read our white paper: How Financial Incentives/Disincentives Undermine Wellness).

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Why Team-Based Wellness Interventions Work

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by Dean Witherspoon A new Annals of Internal Medicine study examined the impact of financial rewards for weight loss on individuals and groups. Not surprisingly (at least to us), when rewards are based on the group's performance rather than just the individual's results, participants lose substantially more weight.

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Health Coaching for Patients with Chronic Illness

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Health Coaching for Patients with Chronic Illness

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Health Coaching for Patients With Chronic Illness

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Does your practice "give patients a fish" or "teach patients to fish"?

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Capstone Project - Initial Presentation - Skul

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Capstone Project - Initial Presentation Powerpoint

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Empirical Evidence of Fairness and Quality in Peer Evaluations 

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Empirical Evidence of Fairness and Quality in Peer Evaluations 

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When executives do this right, they help their organizations thrive

Individual well-being, employee engagement, and a culture of well-being link to important organizational outcomes, such as productivity, health, and employee retention. These factors complement and affect one another in ways that leaders, managers, and organizations can influence.

Managers should be aware of their own engagement and well-being.

So says a recent Gallup study that explored relationships among individual well-being, employee engagement, and a well-being culture over time. The study asked more than 5,000 full-time workers in the U.S. questions about their engagement, well-being, and workplace, then resurveyed them using the same questions about a year later. "We wanted to understand how the elements of well-being, engagement, and culture complement and influence each other," says Jim Harter, Ph.D., Gallup's chief scientist of workplace management and well-being.

The study also revealed:

Individual well-being had an effect on future employee engagement and changes in employee engagement. "If people had higher well-being in year one, they would tend to have higher engagement in year two and a more positive change in engagement in year two," Harter says. "People that have high individual well-being are more likely to see their workplace as positive, productive, and engaging. Conversely, if they are struggling or suffering, it rubs off on the workplace and the team."

Employee engagement in year one affected future well-being culture and well-being culture change. "When you have an engaging team, you're more likely to have an open and trusting culture," Harter says. "That encourages people to talk openly about well-being in ways that positively influence each other's well-being."

These positive changes in individual well-being and employee engagement fed further improvements in well-being and engagement, completing a healthy organizational cycle.

How managers can promote well-being and employee engagement
So here's how managers can keep engagement alive in year one and year two (and in years three, four, and beyond):

Be aware of their own engagement and well-being. As the research shows, there's a strong connection between well-being and engagement, and that applies to managers as well as their employees. For example, employees may not be aware of all the well-being opportunities a company offers, but a manager who discusses and promotes them can encourage his employees to get involved in well-being activities. This reflects a powerful cascade effect from managers to employees, Harter says: "When managers care about their well-being, their team members take a greater interest in their own well-being."

Give employees a platform to recognize the actions they're taking to improve their well-being and engagement. "A lot of studies are showing that change happens because of our social environment," Harter says. "Norms are shared in a way that's contagious, and companies and managers can help set those norms. But the team will carry them forward."

Employees who are engaged and thriving also have greater agility and resilience. "When people are engaged and have thriving well-being, their life situations don't weigh them down and keep them from performing," Harter says. "They see changes as opportunities, not problems." That's a constructive perspective, and managers who promote it by encouraging well-being and engagement will help their companies reap the benefits in year one and beyond.

The Five Essential Elements of Well-Being

For more than 50 years, Gallup scientists have been exploring the demands of a life well-lived. More recently, in partnership with leading economists, psychologists, and other acclaimed scientists, Gallup has uncovered the common elements of well-being that transcend countries and cultures. This research revealed the universal elements of well-being that differentiate a thriving life from one spent suffering. They represent five broad categories that are essential to most people:

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How to Create a Culture of Organizational Well-Being

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When executives do this right, they help their organizations thrive Individual well-being, employee engagement, and a culture of well-being link to important organizational outcomes, such as productivity, health, and employee retention. These factors complement and affect one another in ways that leaders, managers, and organizations can influence.

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The Role of Incentive Design Incentive Value etc

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Specific Organization Type: Health Coach.
For my capstone project, I am hoping to develop a system for health coaches that leads to the development of their abilities in helping our clients lead healthier lives. We have an auditing process in place, however, the information being complied is not being evaluated for common areas of struggle, therefore, we are not given opportunities to develop areas of weakness. Additionally, I believe it will be important to focus on other areas of health in order for optimal success. This includes evaluating what can be changed environmentally, and what is needed from leadership, as well as how to keep positive mentally when confronted with difficult participants – this concept can be applied to anyone in a customer service role. Keeping personal goals will add to the holistic health model and allow coaches to develop in their personal lives which will have a positive effect on their work life and benefit the company’s clients as well.

Springbuk. (2017). Healthiest employers. Retrieved from https://healthiestemployers.com/

Wellness Council of America. (n.d.). The well workplace checklist. Retrieved from https://checklist.welcoa.org/

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Capstone Project - Initial Presentation Powerpoint

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Peer coaching, teaching and assessment strategy

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Peer coaching, teaching and assessment strategy

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Workplace health program definition and description. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/pdf/workplace-health-program-definition-and-description.pdf

Pronk, N. (2014). Worksite health promotion: Best practice design principles of worksite health and wellness programs. American College of Sports Medicine, 18(1), 42-46

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When asked to define 'best practice for worksite wellness', creating a work environment centered on a culture of health comes to mind; specifically, one that increases the number of engaged employees and eradicates the number of disengaged employees. Additionally, in a worksite performing best practices, it is important to have a focus on treating behaviors and the environment to cure disease, prevent future illness, and address root causes.

It is also imperative that a worksite develop a comprehensive approach that also focuses on the development of policies, and benefits, and fosters support throughout the community to encourage health and safety among all employees. Finally, there needs to be a way to measure how the program is working and if it in fact is leading to best practices.

Wellness, with its ancient roots, has expanded to encompass not only physical wellbeing, but also mental, emotional, spiritual, and financial health, therefore worksite programs that do not support all of these will likely fall out of the ever-changing wellness arena given the inability to think progressively and cultivate best practices.

Global Wellness Institute. (2016). The history of wellness. Retreived from https://www.globalwellnessinstitute.org/history-of-wellness/

Khoury, A. (n.d). The evolution of worksite wellness. Corporate Wellness Magazine.com. Retreived from http://www.corporatewellnessmagazine.com/worksite-wellness/the-evolution-of/

Robinson, J. (2013, March 19). How to create a culture of organizational wellbeing. Business Journal. Retreived from http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/159080/create-culture-organizational-wellbeing.aspx

Allen, J. and Hunnicutt, D. (n.d.). Fostering wellness leadership: A new model.Retreived from http://www.csun.edu/~alliance/Wellness_Coreteam/Absolute%20Advantage%20Magazine/Articles/Fostering%20Wellness%20Leadership.pdf

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The topic I have identified is specific to a type of employee within the health industry, in a health organization, the health coach. This topic also encompasses employee engagement. It is a focus on improving outcomes by addressing the health coaching process and uncovering ways to increase participant satisfaction by targeting areas of weakness in the coaching process. Each coach has a different technique and the process should remain as organic as possible, but there are common insufficiencies that can be improved upon to excel the current engagement between the health coach and the participant.

This is an important area to investigate because the health coach influences thousands of people every year, some individuals are brand new to the coaching experience and hesitant to the idea of having a wellness consultant discuss their personal health information with them. By exceeding participant expectations on each call, we can cultivate a higher degree of behavior change among our participants.

Questions this project seeks to answer:

1)     How do we progress to become better coaches and allow for increased engagement?

2)     What are the areas of opportunity to improve as a group?

3)     What techniques would be most beneficial in creating success?

a.      Team trainings

b.     Consistent feedback

c.      Staying up to date with health information

4)     How do we create a plan to ensure consistency?

Questions to uncover regarding the topic

1)     How can we create consistency in engagement in each call without becoming robotic?

2)     What makes a health coach successful? How do we measure this?

3)     How can we create lasting lifestyle changes with a 20-minute call, or at least build curiosity within a participant to seek further information regarding their health?

The objective is to create a tool that provides coaches with feedback on their job performance and then use feedback to identify common areas of ineffectiveness. The purpose is to develop meaningful development plans to help employees be “Better Every Day.”  Employees that have specific development goals are more likely to stay with their employer, which increases employee retention. Additionally, our ultimate purpose is to improve health outcomes.  Positive health outcomes help us to retain our current clients and, marketing these outcomes, helps us gain new clients; this creates growth for the business.

Driving Question:

What tools and practices can be used to increase engagement among health coaches, improve the participant experience, and create consistency within the coaching calls?

American Health Foundation., N., Bennett, W., Coughlin, J., Thrift, J., Kachur, S., & Gudzune, K. A. (2018). Preventive medicine. Preventive medicine reports (Vol. 12). Elsevier. Retrieved from https://doaj.org/article/a3a54950d5a74f1eb7c3494ddac27741

Robinson, J. (2013, March 19). How to create a culture of organizational wellbeing. Business Journal. Retreived from http://news.gallup.com/businessjournal/159080/create-culture-organizational-wellbeing.aspx