Welcome to Consultant Wire, a first of its kind newsletter powered by Propel where we give you confident answers to complex well-being questions your clients are asking.
You don’t have to be around well-being programs for long to see the familiar pattern: engagement spikes at the beginning of the year, dies off, then picks up at the end of the year before an incentive award is finalized.
When organizations ask about spreading out engagement, they’re trying to understand how to improve consistency. In many peoples’ minds, consistency = effectiveness.
This does make sense. We know that healthy habit formation does require consistent behaviors to take root. The assumption is that engagement, when consistent, will lead to healthier behaviors.
For some, the obvious solution is to spread things out, making incentive awards require consistency (e.g., you can only do one step of your journey each day). You may think about how to make the program more of a quarter-to-quarter plan that requires participation within each quarter to earn an incentive.
Some of those solutions are needed (we do recommend quarterly programming to some of our clients), but we’d like to challenge you to think beyond this question to understand the root.
Is the goal of the client to get employees using a technology platform more regularly, or is the goal to move employees from episodic healthy behaviors to habitual, consistent living?
This question offers an opportunity to look beyond technology and focus on behavior. When we stop at the technology, we end up with employees that have formed the habit of logging into a website every day.
We can go deeper and ask questions about the behaviors that the client wants to see improved, then design an environment that supports employees when they begin to make healthy choices.
That environment includes leadership modeling, the role of champions, social proof, removing barriers, and making the behaviors the obvious choice. These are all key levers that can affect lasting change within an organization and the decisions of its employees.
Key Takeaway
Instead of starting with how episodic behaviors are manifesting themselves in participation, let’s first understand how we can support an individual’s propensity to engage in the root behaviors in the first place.
At Propel, we spend a lot of time in the science of behavior and understanding how to affect change beyond technology (which we use as a tool, not the sole solution). We’re actively working with clients to address root issues, then augmenting with technology that’s built for their situation.
If you’d like to learn more about those conversations, set up a call with our team by clicking here.
Unlike most things these days, this was handwritten by a human. If you have recommendations on what we should answer next, feel free to reply with your thoughts.