We use social networking, social games, and social incentives to drive engagement and behavior change.
Over the years, we’ve designed, tested, and proven several key ways to make a wellness program social. We use these methods on the ShapeUp Platform to maximize enrollment, drive sustainable engagement, and produce healthy outcomes. Here are the eight most important ones that we can help you implement at your company to dramatically improve the results of your wellness program.
Create Connections
Connecting people is the core function of social networking—bringing people together for a common purpose. Specifically, we help connect your employees around shared interests. Everyone has goals they are aiming for, such as losing weight, quitting smoking, or staying active. People also have their unique interests like playing soccer, healthy cooking, and yoga. We find out what your employee’s goals and interests are and then connect them to others who share those interests so they can work together and support each other in their quest for healthy living.
Host Challenges & Competitions
We organize challenges and competitions at your workplace. These include individuals competing against each other, teams of people competing, and large groups of people working together to achieve a single goal. There is research showing that cooperative challenges appeal to certain employees and competitive challenges appeal to others – so we mix up the types of challenges that are offered to appeal to the broadest group of people. Our social competitions include motivational mechanics like rankings, levels, points, and prizes. These elements are proven game mechanics used in almost every game out there – because they work. Challenges also provide motivation because they tap into our competitive nature. They also provide accountability (people don’t want to let their team down) and a sense of reward (the feelings of accomplishment we get when crossing the finish line).
Enable Peer to Peer Invitations
Would you rather participate in a healthy activity when invited by a colleague who sits next to you or when invited by a company executive you’ve never met? An invitation from a trusted friend is the most powerful. It makes a wellness program friendlier and more welcoming and adds an element trust. It also takes advantage of peer influence and even peer pressure. After all, how can you say no when your friend invites you to be on her 10,000 steps a day walking team? By encouraging peers to invite each other to wellness programs, we achieve viral recruitment and dramatically increase wellness program participation.
Facilitate Conversations
People love to talk, especially about themselves and about the things they are interested in. We organize conversations about healthy topics such as healthy eating, running, or stress reduction. Employees can ask each other questions and read responses from their colleagues. Coaches and experts can also weigh in on the conversations to ensure that information being discussed is clinically appropriate. Healthy conversations generate rich, relevant, and timely user-created content that makes a wellness program more customized and localized for each individual participant.
Encourage Public Expression
People are engaged by the opportunity to express who they are and by the chance to see how others express themselves. This is one of the most powerful tools used in any online social networking platform like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter. We let employees share a profile with their colleagues, talking about who they are, what they are looking to do (e.g. find an tennis partner), what success they’ve had (e.g. successfully ran a 5K last month), and share updates about what is going on in their life (e.g. going for a walk at lunch today, anyone want to join?). Profiles make it easy for employees to find their friends or connect with others who share similar interests. People love to see what others are doing, and public expression makes a wellness program more personal and engaging.
Promote Peer Encouragement
It is important to receive positive feedback from your peers. Our program facilitates this process by allowing participants to give each other a virtual hi-five or send an encouraging message a team member with congratulations for meeting a personal goal. Being recognized by a colleague is truly motivating and gratifying. We even ask employees to remind each other to submit their progress in a wellness competition or complete healthy activities like a health risk assessment or scheduling an annual physical. Messages from trusted colleagues are more powerful than a top-down approach.
Show Comparison & Status
People always want to know the answer to the following question: how do I measure up against others around me? We answer this question by sharing averages and comparative data. In a walking competition, for example, we tell participants how many steps the average employee is walking. This provides a benchmark for success, as people like to achieve above the mean. People also want to know how they compare to others who are similar to them. So we let participants see results by work location and by specific teams. Research shows that the more relevant the data is, the more motivational it becomes. People are also motivated by status such as a title or a badge indicating a higher level of achievement than others. We help you organize wellness champions and team captains who get special privileges for stepping up to a higher level of commitment.
Tie Rewards to Social Behaviors
In addition to offering a standard menu of financial incentive options for engagement, performance, and outcomes, we also help our clients incorporate incentives for social behaviors such as inviting colleagues to join the program, sending encouragement messages to your peers, and helping 100% of your team members finish a challenge. By including these social strategies in our incentive program, we drive even higher participation, outcomes, and return-on-investment in your wellness program.
