o   This involves participants actively knowing which risk factors they hold and taking the necessary measures to attain/maintain a healthy lifestyle.

o   This is a necessary first step in employee engagement as it provides the recognition of the benefits of employee engagement as well as the openness to wanting to identify risk factors in the hope of mitigating their negative effects.

Next, “deeper integration of wellness into goals” should be added. - 25%

o   Setting goals has been linked by countless studies as a predictor of higher satisfaction with engagement. 

o   Taking this one step further, there is a link between the achievement of organizational goals and a higher level of agreement of the following:

*Employees actively managing health benefits

*Employers providing the most comprehensive benefit design

*Employers valuing providing a wide variety of plan designs

*Employers attracting and retaining employees through the coverage of a majority of the benefit premium costs

o   Now, adding in integration of wellness – satisfaction with engagement is lower when employers rely on their health plan as their primary source of wellness programming. 

o   There is a need for any aspect of the program being offered by an outside vendor to easily integrate with employees and their goals.
 

Finally, “transition from extrinsic to intrinsic motivation” can be added once the first two have been achieved. - 50%

o   “…the rising trajectory of incentives may not be sustainable. While it’s true that larger incentives are generally associated with higher program participation, the key to success is tapping into participants’ intrinsic motivations. Thoughtful programming and behavior design that tap intrinsic motivations can spur engagement and drive down the need for extrinsic rewards. We believe employers who embrace this model will see more people engage without a reliance on ever-increasing incentives.”

o   This ingredient is valued at 50% of the recipe while the first two are valued at 25%. This is because the first two are the building blocks for this ingredient, which is the key ingredient needed for sustainable employee engagement.

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In terms of middle management’s role in building and sustaining a culture of wellness, they serve as gatekeepers and role models for employee engagement. Management must express to employees that wellness initiatives are worthwhile. This can be achieved through acting as wellness champions and participating in initiatives themselves as well as conveying permission and encouragement to participate to the employees that they manage.

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Bultman, K. & Zimmerman, E. (2015). Employee health management comes of age: How definitions and predictors of engagement evolved from 2010 to 2015.  Retrieved from https://www.slideshare.net/GeoffreyKratz/redbrick-health-employee-health-management-comes-of-age-rbh2015

Research shows that about 40% of the success of a behavior change occurs when a supportive environment is established and peer support is received (Aldana, 2018). Policies are powerful tools for creating and sustaining this type of environment. Opportunity – having access to the environment that makes it easy to choose the healthy behavior – is the most important aspect of the behavior change process (O’Donnell, 2010).

References

Aldana. S. (2016, September 7). How the best worksite wellness programs change behavior [Web log post]. Retrieved from https://www.wellsteps.com/blog/2016/09/07/best-worksite-wellness-programs/

O'Donnell, M. (2010). Changing behaviors: Dr. Michael O'Donnell presents a new way to think about behavior change. Retrieved from https://www.welcoa.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/newsviews_odonnell.pdf

 

 

 

I enjoyed reviewing the progression of other classmates’ projects throughout the semester and think that it is great that all of our projects are so different but still fall under the umbrella of wellness. In all honesty, I did not receive as much feedback from others as I would have liked; however, I did change my project topic late in the semester so time is a contributor to this.

 

If I were to re-do this project, I would have focused heavily on securing a placement site early in the semester. Due to unfortunate circumstances, my original placement fell through about half way into the class and I had to scramble to find a second Capstone location and design a new project from scratch to fit with the needs and culture of the organization. That being said, this has been a tremendous learning experience for me and I feel stronger and more confident going into my Capstone experience because of it.