Strategies to encourage remote employees to use wellness benefits

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic made working from home the new normal for many employees, the number of remote employees in the U.S. was growing. Ensuring that these employees feel they are an integral part of your organization and remain connected with their fellow employees is an important factor that affects employee satisfaction, productivity and retention.

Making it easy and rewarding for remote employees to take part in your organization’s wellness programs can not only help build that sense of belonging, but it can also have a positive impact on the employees’ physical and mental health and well-being. These four strategies can help you build consistent remote employee engagement with your wellness offerings.

• Provide wellness offerings that translate well to live streaming and video content: When planning wellness lunch and learn presentations, seminars, demonstrations and classes, make sure remote employees can easily participate via video chat. Remind the presenter to invite interaction and questions from remote participants so they can fully participate. If the class or presentation requires special equipment that you’ll be providing to in-person participants, like a resistance band, ingredients for a healthy cooking demonstration, or a journal for tracking habits, ensure you provide the same equipment and supplies to remote participants or offer reimbursement for them to purchase their own supplies. And if you have remote employees in multiple time zones, record the event and email a link so that those employees can view the content when it’s convenient for them.

• Build an online wellness resource library: This strategy benefits both remote and in-person employees, allowing them to access the information and tools whenever and wherever they want. The library can include information on your organization’s wellness and health benefits and how to access them; exercise and stress management video and audio content; evidence-based, accessible articles on wellness topics and links to resources offered by your wellness providers; and discounts on wellness classes, memberships and equipment. The library should also include a way for remote employees to ask your HR team questions, make suggestions for programs and benefits they’d like to see in the future, and get answers to frequently asked questions about your wellness offerings, which you can make a more interactive experience by using either a chatbot or live chat with an HR team member if feasible.

• Build relationships between remote and in-person employees by teaming them up for wellness challenges and events: Remote employees report that one issue they struggle with, especially during the pandemic, is a feeling of isolation. To counter that, consider creating wellness-based team activities — like miles walked, steps per day and minutes of mindfulness practice — and partner remote and in-person employees on each team. Employees can take virtual walks together, come together for a meditation break during the workday or check in at regular intervals to share their wellness successes and challenges, chatting by phone or connecting through video chat.

• Support employee mental health: The isolation mentioned above coupled with the regular stresses of work and home and the added stresses the pandemic is causing are have a significant impact on employee mental health. Data gathered by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that before the pandemic, 15% to 20% of people surveyed reported living with a mental health issue such as depression or anxiety. By October 2020, that number had risen to 53% of people reporting that they were suffering from mental health issues due to stress related to the pandemic. There has also been a rise in substance use disorders and recovery relapse.

To gauge where your employees are in terms of mental health, conduct an anonymous well-being survey so you can tailor offerings to your employees’ needs. One good option that works well for remote employees as well as in-person ones is providing access to online mental health providers and coverage for this care through the employee health plan or an employer negotiated discount on services to make care more affordable and accessible for all employees. You can also create an online mental health toolkit that remote employees can access anonymously. The toolkit can include a curated list of mental health resources, such as websites and phone numbers for support groups, a step-by-step description of how to access your organization’s mental health benefits coverage and offerings, and articles on strategies to help manage conditions like anxiety, depression, OCD, substance use and eating disorders.