3 ways to communicate about wellness with remote employees

Bringing your best, healthiest self to work is a great way to set yourself up for success within your role. Your employees likely feel the same way.

But what about those work far away from central offices where wellness initiatives are devised and activities take place? Though they aren’t in office, the wellbeing of remote employees is just as crucial to invest in and maintain, especially when they lack some of the human interactions that IRL colleagues benefit from.

Ahead of Ragan’s Employee Experience Conference next month in Nashville, we spoke with of the event’s workshop leaders to learn how communicators help bridge the wellness gap between an organization and its dispersed workforce.

Here are their tips.

1. Crowdsource wellness experiences to drive engagement

While some decry technology for keeping us more tethered to work than is healthy, employee experience tools are also a valuable conduit for spreading benefits messaging throughout an organization.

Heidi Upton, vice president of employee experience at Porter Novelli, said that leaders and managers can think about wellness for all employees, not just the ones they see in the office every day, by encouraging employees to share their wellness experiences. That information can then be used to personalize messages tailored to the programs and benefits that fit them.

“Even just encouraging employees to share things like a step challenge or encouraging an employee that’s running a marathon, that visibility is a big first step to reaching dispersed employees,” she said.

2. Bridge the gap with leadership buy-in

Upton credits her experiences as a remote employee during and after the pandemic with helping her figure out a meaningful wellness outreach strategy for remote employees.

“Wellness benefit reimbursements and on-site yoga classes are great for in-office employees, but getting to remote employees requires a mindset shift from leadership,” Upton said.

During the height of the pandemic, Upton’s leadership team worked with employees to provide both the space and resources for wellness opportunities. These tactics included calendar blocks for wellness breaks and organized group calisthenics exercises. Leaders also leaned into Mental Health Month by participating in a series that included special programs for remote employees. This campaign was launched in multiple languages to draw in employees around the world.

“Whether it was a group wellness class or recipe sharing, the program encouraged people not only to participate but to share their experiences to create a sense of cultural belonging across the company,” said Upton.

3. Drive opportunities home with audience segmentation

Wellness opportunities are only as effective as the avenues to access them that comms provides.

Cade Fleming, account supervisor at Porter Novelli, said that while the scale of benefits and resources can get lost in the noise of day-to-day work, your emphasis on human connection makes a difference.

“Wellness is an intrinsically human concept,” Fleming said. “No matter what type of employee you are, whether you’re in the field, in the office, or working remotely, every employee is owed acknowledgment and wellness communication.”

Fleming emphasizes audience segmentation as an effective method of getting wellness messaging through to employees, regardless of their location. This means including employees who might not be able to access resources when they are first offered.

“We want to provide opportunities for everyone to participate in wellness activities, and that’s why there’s an asynchronous element built in so people can participate after the fact,” he said.

Only after segmenting are you ready to think about the methods of outreach for each audience.   An intranet blast at a pharmaceutical company might work for some desk-based employees in one office, Fleming said, but not as well for manufacturing employees located off-site. Customization can help bring everyone under one wellness umbrella.

“Providing direct messaging from leadership for different subsets of employees can help them feel included,” he added, “and get the sense that leadership is riding along for the wellness journey, too.”

To learn more about the cutting edge in employee experience communication, register today for the Ragan Employee Experience Conference, taking place August 12-14 in Nashville.

Sean Devlin is an editor at Ragan Communications. In his spare time he enjoys Philly sports and hosting trivia.