Pacific Blue Cross knows the secret to getting—and keeping—employees engaged in wellness

When health promotion efforts fail, it’s often because they “start off with a bang, but slide into stagnation” when companies lack the resources required to keep the messages coming and hold employees’ interest, says Sinden Malinowski, program manager, health and wellness, Pacific Blue Cross in Vancouver.

That was the lesson the company learned when it took a step back to size up what it had been doing. Concluding that it needed to engage employees in a more sustainable way, the company decided to revamp its approach. That’s when Malinowski came in.

Malinowski, who has worked in the benefits industry for nearly a decade, heads up a 13-member health and wellness committee. To develop a new approach, Pacific Blue Cross observed what other employers were doing in health promotion, and identified common roadblocks to successful initiatives, namely “resourcing, audience engagement and sustaining momentum over the long term,” says Malinowski. The company also developed a communications plan that specifically addresses those barriers.

At the same time, the company wanted to address the fact that in any organization resources (people and money) are limited. So it launched a new communications and event planning process that would meet two key objectives: increase health awareness to the point that employees are actually making lifestyle changes, and ensure the program’s long-term sustainability.

Malinowski’s team now relies on an annual calendar of health topics, focusing on a new topic each month. “We cover things like mental health—stress, depression—nutrition, fitness, cancer awareness and personal health screening awareness,” she says.

Her team uses a variety of media to convey the information, including the company intranet site, e-newsletters, emails and print materials.

Pacific Blue Cross also employs a unique approach to soliciting employee feedback: wellness team members fan out to talk to people in what Malinowski calls “an informal grapevine approach,” feeding their findings back to the committee. The team also identifies pertinent topics by assessing employees’ aggregate health risks.

An annual survey helps Malinowski’s committee monitor the effectiveness of its campaigns. The 2008 survey indicated that 58% of employees were more aware of ways to improve their health, and that 24% had made lifestyle changes and felt better.

Pacific Blue Cross plans to continue measuring its progress. “We want to see where we can make changes, how we can improve, listen to what our employees need, and really stay tuned to what’s happening out there in the world of health risks,” she says. “Right now we know that mental health is one of the biggest concerns of organizations across Canada. So we’ll focus on that and see what we can do to address it.”

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© Copyright 2008 Rogers Publishing Ltd. This article first appeared in the November 2008 edition of WORKING WELL magazine.