Businesses all over the country are trying to get employee buy-in. They want employees to buy into many things. For many reasons, employee buy-in is very important. It starts with the company mission. Each employee has to look at the company mission and decide if it is in line with what they see themselves doing. Sure, you can argue that a person is going to do a job that pays them money. There is more to it, but on some level everyone has to decide if they want to do a job or not.
How important is employee buy-in? When an employee buys into your mission, they become a force for driving your mission. When an employee does not buy in, they are working against you and your mission.
My clients are from many different industries, so they have many different missions and philosophies. Each company has their own mission. When a mission is communicated, it is important that it is clear to everyone. If not, there can be a mixture of people working for and people working against the company.
Health becomes part of the mission when a company is trying to be successful in all areas. Just like you want employees to focus on goals and reach them in their respective areas, health becomes part of this when a wellness program or business health strategy program is implemented.
Sales people need to buy in to the process, training and goals of the company they work for. They also need to buy into product or service in order to achieve these sales goals. Managers have to buy into the company mission in order to properly train and lead their teams to reflect it.
When companies hold health as a value and as part of their vision, they are setting themselves up for success. As we've seen over the years, companies with healthy employees are able to see benefits in insurance costs, productivity and many other areas that are improved by a healthy energetic workforce.
This can only take place with employee buy-in. If employees do not want to be healthy, they will not. More specifically, if employees do not see the importance of participating in healthy initiatives, they will not participate. They will only do what is comfortable for them. The key is to promote the initiatives from the top and make sure the message is clear.
If the employees are not supported or the initiatives are communicated properly, buy-in will suffer. It's not that people do not want to buy in, it is actually more about the employees not being able to buy in. Health is just like any other area of business. If it is part of your company vision and it is communicated clearly, they can buy in. If there is a lack of consistency, they will have a difficult time buying in even if they want to.
That is where the key of this message comes in. Buy in is important. We know that and seem to be able to put into practice in many areas. We have even gone as far as to say that in the business world, in order to make something happen in a company, we need buy-in.
It's no surprise that the key to employee health and making it really work is making sure that you are getting employee buy-in. The surprise for me is when companies say that they have tried wellness, but have not had success. It seems simple, but maybe that is because I'm used to making sure that each piece is in place before moving forward and certainly before stopping any programming. When a company does not get buy in there must be something they can do. There must be a way for them to keep moving forward despite a lack of buy-in.
In fact there is a way for companies to keep moving forward. They key is to keep focused on employee buy-in. More importantly, they need discover why the lack of buy-in if there is a concern already. This key can help a company keep things moving if they have run into some issues.
Just as preventing illness is a much more cost-effective way to deal with it than treating it. Establishing employee buy-in is much easier and more cost-effective for companies start with a clear focus on it than it is for a company to simply hope it happens and try to fix problems that occur along the way.
It comes down to this: Your employee health program needs to be focused on employee buy-in. There should be a specific plan in place and that plan should be geared toward getting people engaged and believing in the process. The process is important, but the outcomes are even more important.
When you think about the outcomes of employee health programming, it is even clearer that people will buy in. Everyone wants to be healthy. Everyone wants to feel good. A company coming from a perspective of: "We want to help you reach your goals." You will be successful and so will your employees.
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