Just because nearly everyone is working from home doesn’t mean that your employee wellness program has to come to a screeching halt. Now more than ever, your employees will be turning to any source they can for ways to stay mentally and physically healthy. With the power of video, your employee wellness program can provide exactly what they need.

Studies show that wellness programs bring employees together, build camaraderie, and in some cases can increase happiness in your employees, which is great news for everyone involved. In this post, we’ll look at ways to use video to enhance your employee wellness program and track its efficacy while your team is working remotely.

What is an Employee Wellness Program?

An employee wellness program is a program that encourages employees to maintain a healthy lifestyle. These programs can take several different forms, but most tend to cover physical health, mental health, and community-oriented initiatives. While companies are not required to provide employee wellness programs, it is a great way to attract new hires and keep your current employees happy.

During the COVID-19 crisis, these ideals are even more important. Most of us can’t do the activities we’re used to, and are stuck inside. As employers, it’s all about keeping people connected and sharing the information they need to know. It’s important to help employees find a new sense of purpose on the job during this stressful time.

Getting Started

The first step is getting an understanding of what your employees need. A simple assessment or poll can lead you in the right direction. For example, if 80% of employees are leaning toward fitness-related goals, that might be a great place to start.

Once you know what your employees want, the next step is to figure out how to get it to them. Many companies create a wellness committee, or partner with a wellness vendor or company to accomplish this. These individuals will own and advocate for any and all wellness-related activities. This includes creating a wellness policy, gathering feedback, facilitating tools, and more. For more information, check out The Balance’s 11 step guide to starting a wellness program.

Using Video To Promote Wellness

Communicating your newly crafted wellness project is the next step to ensure your efforts aren’t wasted. Video is one of the best ways to announce new initiatives and generate excitement.

Video Newsletter

Adding a video to your email newsletter is a great way to distribute helpful information. Not only will this boost click-through rates, but you’ll be able to use video analytics to see if your employees are watching the videos.

While most email clients don’t support video playback, using a specific email embed code that inserts your video poster frame is a great way to encourage readers to click on your video.

As far as the actual video is concerned, film a short video chock-full of wellness tips and tricks. This could be exercise tips, online fitness classes, new wellness trends, or even just reminders of work benefits that employees can utilize. Websites like Do Yoga With Me or the American Heart Association’s Cooking Skills are good examples of the type of resources you might share. A simple straight-to-camera video will be more than enough for this type of newsletter.

Once you have a format for your video, replicating it on a weekly basis will get easier and easier. If you’re stuck at home, one of our latest How To Video episodes covers the basics of filming yourself without the help of coworkers. Head to our Video Library to watch, “How to Film Yourself for a Professional Result.”

Daily Video Meetings

While this might not be exclusively for wellness, conducting daily video meetings can be extremely helpful when it comes to keeping everyone connected. Even if it’s just a quick update, making sure that employees are interacting with their coworkers face-to-face will remove conversational boundaries while curbing the feeling of isolation.

These meetings could be quick updates about what your employees need to know, how current events might be impacting the business, or even just a break for your employees to catch up and chat.

For video conferencing, there are a variety of options. We use WhereBy for our team meetings at SproutVideo. Wired recently compared 6 very popular video conferencing tools, which is a great place to start. Once you’ve chosen your video conferencing tool, set a recurring meeting and start chatting.

Wellness Videos

While a newsletter might provide information on programs or tips for wellness, creating videos on specific topics could also be a great way to promote your program and get employees involved.

Start by asking employees to share videos of their own personal wellness tips or practices. This can take many forms, such as videos featuring stretches that you can do at home, healthy recipe videos, or mental health tips. These videos can be especially engaging during a time when so many of us can’t see our friends and family.

Equally, you could find reliable resources online to share with your employees. These videos could be posted on a company intranet, shared in a video portal, communication channels like Slack, or sent via email.

Employee Progress Vlogs

One benefit of participating in a wellness challenge at work is the accountability that comes along with sharing your goals with your co-workers, but what if you’re all working from home? This is where progress vlogs come into play. Creating short progress vlogs is one way to keep the accountability aspect of wellness challenges going. Asking your employees to participate in progress vlogs shouldn’t be too difficult considering video chatting is becoming a regular occurrence.

For example, team weight loss challenges are a popular wellness trend. While it might be hard to record yourself doing your workout, sharing a quick 5-10 second video before or after your workout could be a fun way to stay accountable and utilize video. Of course, this could apply to any number of wellness challenges, so figure out which will work best for your team.

Bonus Content

Compile all the clips your employees have sent in, or anything you have that you know will get some laughs, and create a weekly highlight reel. This will without a doubt put a smile on everyone’s face and help people feel more connected.

Tracking Efficacy

One of the hardest parts of running a wellness program is knowing whether you’re reaching who you need to reach, and how effective your program is overall. Video can help with both fronts.

First, detailed analytics let you see exactly who is engaging with your videos. You can even see how much they watched, rewatched, or skipped.

You can also easily ensure these videos stay for employee eyes only. Use allowed domains when sharing on an intranet, or enable login protection or single sign-on if using a video portal.

Additional Help

As global numbers rise, more of us will be directly affected by the pandemic in one way or another. Unexpected grief, dramatic life changes, or more could be a result of this tough time.

While your employee wellness program can help, we’d also suggest making additional assistance widely available to your employees. Recommending online therapy solutions, such as BetterHelp or TalkSpace, both of which offer video sessions, solid starting point.

We’re very curious to hear how other companies are adjusting their wellness plans to better accommodate a remote workforce. Feel free to share your ideas in the comments below.