One of the biggest obstacles for employers is the lack of employee engagement in their own health and well-being. When thinking about new ways to engage your workforce, several lessons can be gleaned from the retail industry.
Retailers understand your shopping habits and trends, and use this insight to influence you to buy their products. Retailers take into consideration buyer’s demographics, behaviors, psychographics and experience.
When thinking through how to get people engaged in your workplace health programs, a similar concept can be applied. There are four factors to consider when moving from a one-size-fits all approach to a personalized engagement strategy:
- The individual’s health risks. Aggregating health-related data helps you uncover actionable information about your population.
- The methods and frequency in which individuals engage in health-related activities. Individuals may choose to participate in a team weight loss challenge or attend an educational workshop. To predict future trends, it’s important to know historical data.
- What individuals believe about their health. To predict how individuals might engage in their health, it’s important to understand a person’s perspective on heath and care.
- Personal readiness to change. Understanding an individual’s mental engagement is critical to understanding how to engage with them.
Once aggregated data uncovers these elements, you can categorize your workforce into various segments and tailor your engagement strategy. The following factors are important to successful engagement:
- Type of communication. Targeted communication engages people because you appeal to what interests and motivates them.
- Engagement method. To successfully communicate, it’s critical to reach out to individuals via their preferred communication channel.
- Who should communicate. Communications from a health care professional, such as a health coach or primary care physician helps build trust.
- Incorporate key words. Key words targeted to your audience encourages engagement and action.
By implementing a personalized engagement plan, you can provide a better experience for your workforce and help motivate them to become more involved in their health. Individuals who are more involved in their own health achieve better outcomes, incur lower costs, are happier and more productive.
Contact us to learn more information about how Cerner is innovating to provide a personalized engagement approach for employers.
