I recently approached a population health management company about including our nutrition-centered content as part of its deliverables. They seemed a likely partner for a number of reasons, including our developing alliances. So all systems go — dialing away…
I was just about to hit my elevator-pitch stride, which I sheepishly admit to chomping at the bit to tout every chance I get, when I was interrupted by the exec on the line. Quicker than you can say, "center ring," visions of P.T. Barnum were dancing in my head. "People don't read today. Circuses are what it's all about. Touchable wellness interventions that have the look and feel of sexy. You know, like a trapeze artist hanging on by one toe without a net below — but all digitalizable."
Aside from wondering whether "digitalizable" is really a word, I got the gist. While much more colorful, his retort isn't too far afield from a lot of the chitchat we engage in with wellness professionals on a weekly basis. The greatest-show-on-earth theme also reflects what we're seeing from a wellness innovation/new products standpoint these days. Providers delivering these solutions increasingly have names centered on the pow.
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Don't get me wrong, we're as enamored as the next guy with arm candy and tracking our steps to get to the donut in the lunchroom. And competitions that pit us against our fellow employees bring out the adrenalin buy-in rush and our killer instinct tendencies for a short while, too. And those gift cards definitely come in handy when we can dig them out of our must-be-here-somewhere inboxes and purses.
All joking aside, we recognize there are some successes tied to digitalizable, hoopla, and expense. However, based on corporate wellness engagement and sustainability statistics and our nation's general health status, we've always had legitimate concerns. And then there's that worry about the flash in the pan being enough for some vendors that will be satisfied with laughing all the way to the bank even if only for a few years. Or those "solutions" that make more money on the comeback than they do on their core deliverables.
In our earliest experiences, we had no choice but to produce impactful outcomes within incredibly restricted budgets — quickly. So with creativity born of necessity, we demonstrated that people will, as one example, do that old-fashioned thing called reading — and then benefit from it. The challenge was, and remains everyday for us, how to make content about Better Snacking! enticing without costing an arm and a leg. The light bulb took a little while to go off, but it ultimately did; we found that the most significant part of the answer doesn't lie in the brilliance of the font, the images used, or the reward/punishment.
What experience taught us is that it's possible to leverage everyday relationships and connections to create engagement and new, long-lasting habit change. We learned that it doesn't have to be expensive — and is actually better when the price tag isn't too hefty — to help employees and their families step up to:
- Connect with one another to create shared responsibility and accountability for improving wellness.
- Galvanize wellness change in their own backyards whether at work, home or school.
- Use straightforward tools and resources geared to whole households, not just individuals, on a routine basis.
Such a basic approach admittedly lacks luster in the face of digitalizable and the bearded lady. But we'd bet a lot of our version of gold — fiber — that simple, the new cutting edge, will beat out the circus when it comes to effective wellness initiatives.
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