How Push Notifications Can Increase Wellness Program Engagement

Increasing employee engagement in workplace wellness programs is vital to achieving a positive change in the overall workplace wellbeing. Learn how push notifications re-engage participants. 

With apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter notifying users about every last like, comment, and share in combination with the countless emails, messages, and phone calls demanding instant attention daily, mobile phones have become the central hub to directly communicate with users. On average, mobile app push notifications alert American smartphone users 46 times per day.

If push notifications can increase app engagement by 88%, and app retention rates can increase up to 10 times, can the same be said for applying push notifications to your digital employee wellness platform? 

Importance of Wellness Program Engagement

Prioritizing wellness makes business sense, as healthier employees are more productive and efficient. Wellness programs offer a set of tools to help employees reduce stress, adopt healthy behaviors, and/or manage chronic diseases, to name a few benefits. However, implementing a workplace wellness program without having high employee engagement will yield limited positive health results across your entire workforce. This threatens the ROI of your wellness program.

Why Wellness Programs Struggle to Engage Employees

Many factors contribute to why employees have low engagement in workplace wellness programs. 

Lack of Gamification

Unlike the instant gratification, one receives from getting a ‘like’ on their newest LinkedIn post, convincing an employee to improve their diet, meet with a wellness coach or take a health risk assessment (HRA) feels far less rewarding (that is, in the short term). One way to combat employees’ unwillingness to continually engage in your wellness program is to incorporate gamification.

Incorporating incentive-based points for participation helps users feel rewarded for their healthy actions. Push notifications complement the use of gamification as they remind users to complete their daily tasks to earn their virtual points. 

Corporate Culture Without a Focus on Wellness

If wellness is not a guiding principle or value of an organization, they may lack the internal enthusiasm to promote their wellness program. Likewise, without proper communication from senior leadership, wellness coordinator, HR manager, or benefits manager, engagement in a corporate wellness program may fall short.

Better communicating workplace wellness programs will increase employee awareness of their wellness program, and having your remote or in-person workplace culture live and breathe wellness will increase employee buy-in. 

Wellness programs that increase a sense of community through leaderboards, messaging and buddy groups will help to engrain a sense of wellness into the company culture. Push notifications are a channel of connection that wellness program administrators can use to encourage wellness to their employee users. 

Employees Don’t Prioritize Wellness Programs

Old habits, busy schedules, stress from remote working, or adjusting to working at the office again are among a few reasons why employees may not prioritize their participation in workplace wellness programs. Over the past year, workplace wellness programs have adapted to new and old stressors that employees face. Offering a wellness program that targets relevant areas of wellness that employees need assistance with is a great way to boost engagement. Sometimes all it takes is a simple nudge in an employee’s mobile notification center for them to re-prioritize their well-being. 

How Push Notifications Impact Employee Engagement

CoreHealth’s clients typically report high enrollment in wellness programs, but engagement throughout the duration of a workplace wellness challenge or coaching program, may wane.

Our Recommendation: Develop a channel of communication between wellness program administrators and employees.

Using push notifications, unengaged users can be alerted when they are not on track for their goals or if they miss tracking their goals. Our Native App recognizes when a user had been inactive and attempts to re-engage the user by sending a push notification.

Additionally, push notifications can be programmed to remind users about their events, sessions, and appointments. 55% of American smartphone users reported enabling reminder push notifications to contact them at least once per day. When you combine a high acceptance rate of reminder notifications with a workplace culture that promotes the importance of each employees’ wellbeing, wellness programs should see a boost in employee engagement.

Make your wellness program one of the 40+ mobile notifications your employees see in a day by contacting CoreHealth Technologies today!

About CoreHealth Technologies

CoreHealth Technologies Inc. is a total well-being technology company trusted by global providers to power their health and wellness programs. Our wellness portals help maximize health, engagement, and productivity for 3+ million employees worldwide. We believe people are the driving force of organizations and supporting them to make behavior changes to improve employee health is in everyone’s best interest. With the most flexibility, customizations, and integrations of any software in its class, CoreHealth’s all-in-one wellness platform helps grow great wellness companies. Simple to sophisticated, based on you. For more information, visit the CoreHealth website.