What wellness platforms and wellness portals are the best? This is a question many people ask themselves when they are trying to find a wellness program. Moreover, the answer is, it depends on what you need. In this blog post, we will discuss the top 10 features of wellness platforms and wellness portals that can help you make your decision easier.
Contents
- 1 What are Digital Wellness Platforms?
- 2 Top 10 Features of Best Digital Wellness Platforms
- 2.1 1. Manage Confidential Health Assessment
- 2.2 2. Educate
- 2.3 3. Track Program Participation And Activity
- 2.4 4. Make Engagement Easy With a Mobile App
- 2.5 5. Track and Administer Incentives and Rewards
- 2.6 6. Demonstrate How To Be Healthy
- 2.7 7. Corporate wellness challenges
- 2.8 8. Targeted Communication
- 2.9 9. Wearable Technology Integration
- 2.10 10. Incentive Management
- 3 A Word from Mantra Care
What are Digital Wellness Platforms?
Web-based wellness programs can use computer tools that are called digital wellness platforms. These help with organizing and running a program.
Historically, a wellness program has been nothing more than a website with health information. Today, everyone can access this type of website- it’s called Google.
Digital wellness platforms are more than just a place with information about your health. They are used to help people get healthy. Published studies show that the most effective wellness programs are focused on helping people adopt and maintain healthy behaviors.
This logic shows that a good employee wellbeing program can change the behavior of employees. They can establish healthy habits.
Top 10 Features of Best Digital Wellness Platforms
Here are the top 10 features of the best digital wellness platforms that you must know.
1. Manage Confidential Health Assessment
Step one for changing behavior is to become educated about what needs to change. Health programs start with a health assessment and then a biometric screening.
Accordingly, the results from these assessments show us the things in our lives that need to be improved. Whether you do it on a computer or mobile device, wellness portals can make it easy to report your personal health risks and get information about the results from your biometric screening.
The part of behavior change that is easiest to do is education and awareness. Wellness portals help people by assessing their health data, making recommendations for them, and encouraging them to improve. The challenge is to gather information and then provide it in a way that is simple and easy to understand.
Taking a personal health assessment on a mobile device is very simple.
2. Educate
Accordingly, there are many ways to teach employees about the need for healthy behaviors. A good wellness program will use video content, live presentations, webinars, books, audio files, and social media to help people understand how important it is to have a healthy lifestyle.
Wellness platforms are good at interpreting and reporting personal health information. Here is an example of personalized feedback from WellSteps wellness solution.
For many wellness programs, education and awareness are all they do. But you will need more to make the program effective.
3. Track Program Participation And Activity
Well-programmed wellness systems will automatically keep track of what you do. If you see progress, it will motivate you to continue with new behaviors.
You can see how your activity changes over time by showing your participation. Technology can help people. It can do things like track data from devices like Fit Bit or Jawbone, and it can tell if someone has watched a video or completed a task.
This is a way to see what is happening with your wellness plan. You can see the live reports of things you are doing for it. This is one of the most important parts of a wellness platform.
4. Make Engagement Easy With a Mobile App
For this purpose, there was a time when people used paper forms and printed materials to report on health risks or to participate in a wellness program. Creating, printing, shipping, and collecting these materials was difficult.
Most people are able to go on the internet with their work. It is easier and better than before, which is why many people are doing it.
Generally, every company’s wellness program should have a computer and a mobile app. The mobile app should allow everyone in the company to take part in every aspect of the wellness program.
In the future, most people will use a cell phone or tablet. Apps can help your employees to be more motivated and healthy.
5. Track and Administer Incentives and Rewards
When we talk about motivation, most of us think about employee incentives. That means that people can earn points for completing different things in the wellness program.
As a result, your employee wellness program needs to be easier. It needs to have a system that makes it easy for employees to report and track their progress.
The easier it is for employees to participate, the more they will enjoy it and the more likely they are to acquire new, healthy behaviors.
6. Demonstrate How To Be Healthy
In addition, elevated health risks can be difficult to produce. If you do these three things right, then they are very effective. Most people who have elevated health risks already know that their health is not as good as it should be.
What people need is a way to improve their lives. First, they need to change habits that make them unhealthy. Kids need to know how to buy healthy foods. They need to avoid unhealthy fast food and be physically active. Kids also need to know how to avoid situations where they may be tempted to use tobacco.
Indeed, exercise is good for you. It is not easy to know what type of exercise to do and how to do it. Behavior change is hard. But it can be made easier with the help of online sites that teach people how to do it. The skills and know-how can then be used to change a person’s life for the better.
This can be done with the video, but it would be even better if the system were used to help people learn how to create healthy habits. Likewise, there can be a live meeting where people can talk and ask questions and teach others about health. The system could also let you talk to people from other places.
7. Corporate wellness challenges
Generally, you can do a health challenge to get people involved. This is a fun and easy way to get people involved. They will be happy if they win! Similarly, if you do not want to do this work, don’t worry. There are best wellness programs that are easy to use. They include wellness challenges that you can launch and manage like:
- Eat more fruits and vegetables.
- Get about 8 hours of sleep each night.
- Exercise every day. Thirty minutes a day is good to do.
- Keep track of what you eat. Write it down in a diary.
- You should try to stay healthy!
Further, health challenges can help you to get healthier. You can use it to track what you do and how much exercise you do. Furthermore, it will help motivate people, create a culture of health, and get people involved in the game! How do you do it? Write down some steps and tell people about the points they will get if they complete them. In the meantime, tell them how to track their activity and how it will affect their points.
8. Targeted Communication
Above all, if you want your wellness program to have a difference in people’s health and the lives of your employees, you need to create focused messages. You can do this by doing things like – sending email notifications, providing updates on their wellness goals online, or letting them know when they are close to achieving their goals.
- If someone has 3 or more risk factors for chronic disease, they should meet with a health coach.
- Create a program to help people who have hypertension (high blood pressure) learn about how to lower it.
- Host an exercise class or group walk for people who don’t get enough exercise.
Do you have employees who work at different places? Make sure they know about your wellness program. Send them messages so they can see what the program is about.
9. Wearable Technology Integration
Although, people know that self-reported data is not good for measuring physical activity. But how do you know if people are active in the program? Use wearable technology to collect data about what people are doing.
- Fitness watches
- Digital tracking devices
- Mobile apps
Besides, if your company’s wellness platform can work with popular apps and devices, it is easy. The most popular ones are Google, Apple, Fitbit, Garmin, and Samsung. If your wellness platform uses a third-party aggregator, ask yourself these questions:
- Where does the data go?
- Where is the data stored? The data is stored.
- Who owns the data?
- Is the third party selling your data?
- What is your data being used for?
- Do you have a BAA?
- If a third party experiences a security breach, is your participant data at risk?
You can use your digital devices and apps to get data about what people are doing. But you need to make sure your wellness platform provider protects the data.
Moreover, if you want people to be more active, how do you know if they are? Self-reported data is not a good way to track physical activity. What can you do instead? You can use wearable technology to track the health data of your employees. Some devices and apps will work with your corporate wellness software if they can communicate with each other.
10. Incentive Management
In order to motivate people to complete a wellness task, you may offer them a reward. Generally, this might include things like money.
•This is a way for people to see if they are at health risks. It takes only 5 minutes.
•Biometric screening is a way of checking who you are. You can do this by taking your finger and putting it on the machine.
• Do a office fitness challenge.
• You need to eat better food. You can eat healthy food that has more vitamins and minerals in it.
•Wellness events are good for your health.
The solution to boosting participation: An effective corporate wellness program should be designed to make it easy for people to assign point values for their wellness activities. A way to get points is by doing things like filling out surveys. When you get points, you can trade them in for gift cards or other prizes.
A configurable platform allows you to set the parameters that fit your company. You don’t need to use the criteria of other companies.
A Word from Mantra Care
Furthermore, large studies have found that most of the time, the cause of a disease is our lifestyle. That means that most of our health problems by what we do or do not do. Healthy employees are good for the company. Some programs that help you be healthy will reduce your healthcare costs and lower health risks.
Do you want to keep your employees happy, healthy, and productive? Join our employee assistance program and get a healthier workplace.