Wellness Program Incentives

Gaining upper management reinforcement is vital to the success of a physical activity program.

Whether the changes you’d like to see involve the work environment, overall policies or specific programs, successfully implementing your ideas is dependent upon upper management reinforcement.

Support from management is vital for 3 reasons:

• You need their support to involve workers in a workplace program.
• When upper management pays attention to and supports program, workers also see the program as worthwhile.
• Senior Management has the power to give work time and money to support the initiative.

It’s important to keep senior staff involved throughout a physical exercise plan, but at three points you’ll need backing for:

• An overriding concept, including a go-ahead to evaluate what employees want to do within the limitations of your workplace environment.
• A detailed plan (based on the assessment above) coupled with resources to carry out the plan.
• Analyzing the plan to better it along the way or to advocate for continuing or expanding the plan.

Approaching Senior Leadership

Prior to going to upper management to gain initial support for promoting physical exercise during work, do your homework.

• Prepare a business case clearly outlining how the business will advance by promoting physical exercise during the workday.
• List the individual, social and corporate benefits of physical activity and the benefits of being active during the workday.
• Present some cursory ideas about what the program could include. See the Success Stories and Ideas sections on this website to highlight what other workplaces have done.

Expect questions such as the following from upper management:

• How will this help our company?
• How can we motivate workers to participate?
• How much will it cost to run this program or make this change?
• How are we going to know a year from now if this was a meaningful use of time and resources?

Ask managers about the types of activities they would support. Often managers have ideas of their own they would like to see acted on to better the workplace.

Remember to include middle managers when gaining backing for your initiative. They may prove to be very helpful when you need volunteers to lead teams in corporate physical activity challenges.