Think about the last time your organisation offered a wellbeing initiative. Perhaps it was a workshop, an app, a counselling session or something as simple as a day focused on wellbeing. For some employees, it may have been exactly what they needed. Others may have found it difficult to fit into their day, while some may simply have had little use for it at that particular point.
The initiative itself hasn’t changed. What has changed is the person receiving it, along with their circumstances, preferences and what they happen to need at that moment.
That is becoming increasingly relevant as employees expect more from the experiences and support available to them at work. Wellbeing is personal, so perhaps workplace wellness needs to become a little more personal too.
People Don’t Arrive at Work With the Same Needs
Walk into any workplace and you will find people dealing with very different things. Someone may be settling into a new role and still finding their rhythm, while a colleague may be deep into a demanding project and struggling to find enough time in the day. Another employee may already have routines that work well for them and only need support occasionally.
Their preferences can be just as different. One person may enjoy a group session where they can talk things through, while another would rather have something they can use privately and at their own pace. For someone else, feeling appreciated by their manager or connected to their team may matter more than either.
These differences are easy to overlook when wellbeing is planned at an organisational level. A programme has to be designed for a workforce, but the people experiencing it don’t suddenly become a single group because they work for the same organisation.
That is where the idea of more personal wellbeing begins to take shape.
Personalising Wellbeing Gets Complicated at Scale
For an organisation, recognising these differences is one thing. Building a wellbeing offering around them is another.
A company with hundreds or thousands of employees still has to work within budgets, schedules and programmes that can reach people across the business. It cannot realistically design a completely different experience for every individual, even if that were desirable.
This is often where the tension appears. The more an organisation standardises its approach, the easier it becomes to deliver consistently, but the greater the chance that some employees will find parts of it difficult to use or simply irrelevant to them. A workshop held at a particular time may suit one group and miss another. A digital resource may be convenient for some and never become part of someone else’s routine.
There is a practical challenge here: how do you give people something that feels relevant to them while still making it workable for an entire organisation?
Give People More Ways to Engage
There may be a more practical way to approach this. Instead of trying to work out exactly what every employee needs, organisations can give people a few different ways to engage with wellbeing and let them decide what fits their circumstances.
That could mean a workshop for someone who wants guidance and conversation, a digital tool for someone who would rather take a few minutes for themselves during the day, or something as simple as an experience that makes a person feel noticed and appreciated at work. None of these needs to become a separate programme with its own set of processes.
The choice can be quite simple. Someone may take part in a session one month and use a digital resource the next. Another employee may rarely use either but value the small gestures that make them feel connected to their workplace.
When people have some choice, a shared wellbeing offering can still feel personal without becoming difficult for an organisation to manage.
What This Changes for Workplace Wellness
Once people have some choice, the role of the organisation changes too. Rather than trying to predict what will work for everyone, it can focus on making different forms of support available and easy to access when people need them.
That also gives wellbeing programmes some room to evolve with the workforce. A new employee may need something quite different from someone who has been with the organisation for years. The needs of a team going through a particularly demanding period may change again a few months later.
For HR and L&D teams, this means thinking beyond participation numbers and asking whether the support being offered still reflects the people using it. A wellbeing offering has to work for the organisation, but it also has to make sense to the people experiencing it.
Personal Wellbeing, Without Making It Complicated
Workplace wellbeing still needs to work at an organisational level. There have to be programmes, resources and systems that can reach people across the business. But there is room within that structure for people to engage differently, depending on what they need and what fits their working day.
That is what we are trying to build with iPRIMED Wellness. By bringing different forms of wellbeing support together, we give organisations more flexibility in how they support their people, without expecting every employee to follow the same path.
For us, a more personal approach does not mean making workplace wellness complicated. It means recognising that people will engage differently and creating enough choice for those differences to have a place.
If you are looking for ways to make wellbeing more relevant to your people, talk to us about iPRIMED Wellness.
Know more:
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