TL;DR:Employees take their cues from managers. When leaders participate in wellness initiatives, encourage healthy habits, and model well-being, employees are far more likely to engage. If you want better wellness program participation, start by getting managers involved.
You’ve launched the wellness challenge. You sent the emails. You offered incentives. Maybe you even brought in a new vendor or expanded your benefits.
Yet participation remains frustratingly low.
When that happens, most organizations look at the program itself. They tweak the rewards, add new activities, or increase communication. But often, the real issue isn’t the program.
It’s the managers.
Employees pay close attention to what their leaders prioritize. If managers skip the wellness challenge, never attend employee events, work through lunch, and answer emails late into the evening, employees notice. Those behaviors send a message about what is truly valued, regardless of what the wellness campaign says.
The opposite is also true. When managers participate, encourage healthy habits, and visibly make time for their own well-being, employees are far more likely to follow suit.
In other words, the success of your wellness program may have less to do with the program itself and more to do with the people leading your teams.
Here’s why manager involvement matters so much and what organizations can do to turn managers into their most powerful wellness champions.
