Health is a personal responsibility. However, it is the onus of the organization to engender a culture which encourages people to discharge this responsibility well.
But culture is not an esoteric concept which should be allowed to evolve organically. Cultures have to be woven together with processes which are designed mindfully and implemented in a disciplined manner.
A culture always aims at bringing a behaviour change and this can be achieved only if the change programme has woven in three important ingredients. In fact, the same framework can be used to evaluate workplace wellbeing programmes too. These 3 important ingredients are:
1) Knowledge
The programme should inform employees with the right knowledge about different aspects of wellbeing. For example, it is important for people to know how to read labels in order to make informed choices about their eating habits.
2) Attitude
For a variety of reasons there are many dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about various aspects of lifestyle that have made a place in society. These need to be changed – for example, the notion of resting or distressing by binge watching TV shows on an OTT platform. Organizations can play a very important role in driving initiatives to influence such attitude of people towards their health and wellbeing.
3) Practice
Knowledge and attitude are extremely important aspects of building healthy lifestyle, however the most important part where people actually fail is ‘practicing healthy habits.’ Picking up healthy habits for a short term are far easier than maintaining them. (All fads that are prevalent in the health & wellbeing space are enough proof of the same). Most of the time, organizations are successful in igniting the interest in people, even inspiring them to make small changes in their lifestyle. However, at times, the duration or the construct of the program does not acknowledge the fact that persistence is not a virtue that people exhibit when it comes to taking care of that own health. It is therefore important to have organizations design programs, which are consistent in their messaging and include multiple avenues for people to continue to practice a certain way of living till it becomes a part of their being.
Hence, all organizations should make sure that all their wellbeing programmes which intend to achieve behavioral change in the habits of people have three aspects to it – knowledge attitude and practice.
“People don’t resist change. They resist being changed!”
– Peter Senge
DESIGN
PRINCIPLES
Any well-meaning wellbeing practitioner
would tell you how difficult this is. So what does it take to make any kind of
initiative achieve success. At plugH, whenever we design any kind of initiative,
we make sure that it ticks the following three boxes in terms of its design:
1. ATTENTION: Any learning program’s design has to attract the attention of people to pique their interest and curiosity which is the first step to active participation. Haven’t we seen the learning world which grimaced at the suggestion of fun and games now swearing by gamification?
2. RETENTION: You might make the most attractive campaign or promotional program which captures the attention of people but if people forget about it as soon as it is over – then it really does not serve its purpose. Therefore, we advocate creation of health promotion campaigns in a manner that keeps the messaging simple attractive and easy to remember.
3. BEHAVIOURAL REPRODUCTION: The third most important thing is the design of the campaign – it should be such that people are able to transfer the learning of the program to their everyday life. The programme has to be therefore relevant to the audience and give ample opportunities to move from Knowing – to Believing – to Doing – to Being
In keeping with the above principles, plugH has a host of toolkits which make sure that your programme has the required elements to nudge your people to make permanent shifts in their lifestyle choices
