Wellbeing Pledges are a new and important tool for achieving workplace excellence. Culture Ambassadors would love to help you to create your first Wellbeing Pledge for no obligation of any kind.
Wellbeing Projects for Employee Engagement
WELLBEING BACKGROUND
Gallup’s landmark book entitled “Wellbeing: The Five Essential Elements” was published in 2010. The five essential elements were Social, Community, Financial, Physical and Career. A goal was to cause people to think about and improve how well things are going in their lives for each of these elements. Gallup was saying back then that Wellbeing was more involved than only Wellness (Physical) but that misunderstanding still somewhat exists.
In 2021, Gallup published “Wellbeing at Work”. In 2010 the emphasis was on the individual but the 2021 book makes it clear that the same Wellbeing elements apply to the overall company and its employees. That includes aligning decisions and policies in support of the Wellbeing elements.
An important point in the latest book is that “Wellbeing is about how well life is going.” That is a wonderfully simple way to explain and think about Wellbeing. There is sophisticated research underway to come up with a single predictor of Wellbeing but it is an extremely complex situation and we are years, if ever, away from that.
Culture Ambassadors has created a practical approach to address Wellbeing in business workplaces using the simple meaning of Wellbeing and applying it to words typically found in core values and vision statements. The practical approach we call “Wellbeing Pledges”. At Culture Ambassadors our focus is on employees. However, Wellbeing Pledges are for individuals, families, groupings such as employees in a company, or residents in a community.
ISSUES
These are example issues that caused Wellbeing Pledges to be conceived:
- Improvement in social and community Wellbeing is essential for humans to thrive.
- Only thirty-six percent of U.S. employees are engaged in their work and workplace.
- Forty-six percent of job seekers cite company culture as very important when choosing to apply to a company.
- Nine out of ten career professionals would sacrifice 23 percent of their future earnings for work that is more meaningful.
- Eighty percent of survey respondents identified wellbeing as an important priority for their organization’s success, but only 12% said that they were very ready to address the issue.
- Twenty seven percent of employees strongly believe in their company’s values, and less than half strongly agree that they know what makes their organization stands for and what makes it different.
- Twenty-five to thirty-five year-olds said they’d be willing to give up an average of $7,600 in pay for a better career development and a healthier work/life balance.
- Every dollar invested in the employee wellness program yielded $6 in health care savings.
- The cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times the employee’s annual salary.
- Nearly half of U.S. workers are watching or hunting for job opportunities.
- A disengaged employee costs an organization approximately $3,400 for every $10,000 in annual salary.
TERMINOLOGY
Wellbeing: An indicator of how well things are going.
Wellbeing Pillars: These are categories of Wellbeing including but not limited to social, community, physical health, mental health, career, financial, behaviors, and purpose.
Wellbeing Pledges: These are projects within Wellbeing Pillars that describe measurable actions and activities that result in employee experiences for the betterment of Wellbeing. A Wellbeing Pledge might be for the Financial Pillar. The Pledge would describe a project(s) with actions and activities for employees to live and experience greater financial Wellbeing.
Wellbeing Culture: A culture where Wellbeing Pillars are at targeted levels of planned achievement and Wellbeing Pledges are at targeted levels of planned participation.
WELLBEING PLEDGE CRITERIA
Following are the conditions to be considered as a Wellbeing Pledge.
- Pledges are for the betterment of Wellbeing, i.e., how well things are going in life.
- Pledges are explicitly linked to one or more Pillars such as core values or Gallup’s essential elements.
- Pledges are actionable and have movement.
- Pledges have a clear structure and process.
- Pledges have details for implementation.
- Pledges are implementable – the know-how and resources exist to put them into effect.
- Pledges are distinctive and not usual perk or benefits.
- Pledges are measurable – the effects can be directly and clearly measured.
WELLBEING PLEDGE EXAMPLE
A terrific example of a Wellbeing Pledge is from Parivida Solutions in Dallas, Texas. The Pillar is Continuous Learning.
Pariveda has an annual conference where company employees are the speakers. In a TED Talk-style program they present topics that emphasize continuous learning.
Employees across all levels submit abstracts on what they’d like to present as forward-thinking ideas. Then a team of employees review and refine the abstracts (if needed) and a set of topics are selected by an employee-led committee to be included in that year’s event. The employee’s selected to present get support and coaching by senior Pariveda leaders and an outside communications coach.
The result is an all-day conference showcasing thought leadership from Pariveda employees as a way of learning together, coaching one another and giving back to the Pariveda community.
WELLBEING PLEDGES AS VIDEOS
A fun and valuable step is to create branding videos to visually tell the story of each Wellbeing Pledge. These are appealing and compelling tools for a company to attract the best prospects for new employees and keep the best that are already in place.
GET STARTED
First form an employee team and use these rough guidelines.
Wellbeing Pledges
- Select a word(s) or term(s) from your core values or vision statement that is especially important for your company brand.
- Decide what Pillar is the best fit.
- Brainstorm employee activities that would turn those words into actions.
- Select one activity and draft a description in detail for how it could be implemented.
- Check the draft with the Wellbeing Pledge criteria.
- Face-to-face, present the Pledge to management for their endorsement.
- Decide final steps to market and implement the Pledge within the company.
- Announce the Wellbeing Pledge to all employees.
- Launch the Pledge project with its activity and recruit employee participation.
Video
- Prepare a 30 second script that describes the Pledge.
- Have others read aloud the script and continue to refine it.
- Brainstorm for images and “power” words that “fit” the script.
- Do a draft story board of the images and words.
- Engage a professional to finalize the script, images, words and narration and program the video.
EXPERTISE PARTNERS
Are you a part-time or full-time freelance consultant, or a member of a consulting team? Do you think it would be fun to work with companies to create Wellbeing Pledges? Do you think it would be fun to suggest images and scripts for Wellbeing Pledge videos? If you said yes to the three, let’s talk. There is total privacy and no obligation.
Do you have a marketing agency? Would you like to explore if Wellbeing Pledges might be an additional service for you? If you said maybe, let’s talk.
DEVELOPMENT PARTNERS
Culture Ambassadors has development partners. These are companies that provide a modest amount of money to apply towards our software development and offer advice on product features. In return, they have lifetime rights to use the company’s software for no fee. If interested click I’m Inquiring and we can chat about possibilities. These are examples of development partners.
ABOUT
Gerald R. Wagner, PhD., is the Founder and President of the company. He was a co-founder of the fields Decision Support System (DSS) and Group Decision Support System (GDSS) and started four entrepreneurial ventures in these areas. Jerry has been on the faculty at the University of Texas, Austin, Texas A&M, the University of Nebraska, Omaha, and Bellevue University. During a period of his time at the University of Nebraska, he was a Gallup Senior Scientist. While at UNO, he was named the Nebraska Technology Professor of the year. Also, while at UNO he started the BSc. degree in IT Innovation in the College of Information Science and Technology.
In 2011, Jerry left his career in Information Technology to join Bellevue University and startup the Employee Wellbeing Institute.He formed Culture Ambassadors LLC to be the leading influence for companies to organize and sustain Wellbeing Cultures. He also founded the Academy of Culture Ambassadors a 501(c)3 non-profit corporation.
CONTACT
Gerald R. Wagner, PHD
President
cultureambassadorsinc@gmail.com
Copyrighted 2021 with All Right Reserved. Culture Ambassadors LLC.