Employee Wellness Blog | TotalWellness

Creating a Mission Statement for Your Employee Wellness Program

Written by Becky Squiers | Thu, Mar 03, 2016

You probably have a corporate mission statement where you work, but have you ever thought of creating a wellness mission statement?

This type of mission statement is just like any corporate statement in that it’s meant to guide your wellness program. Your wellness mission statement should drive your goals and clarify what you’re doing in employee wellness.

Why Create a Wellness Mission Statement?

Having a mission statement is a great way to clarify the intentions of your employee wellness program. It not only briefly explains what you do, but why you do it and where you want to go with it.

Your wellness mission statement can also be used as a reference point. Any corporate wellness goal you set should stem from your mission statement. This helps to simplify your wellness strategy by defining a clear direction for your wellness program to go.

Finally, a mission statement can help to identify a persona for your program. If your program is cohesive and visible, it’s more attractive to your employees. This can really help with employee engagement and wellness buy-in.

Ultimately, a mission statement can help your wellness program in a lot of the same ways your corporate mission helps your business. It provides clarity, direction and relatability for employee wellness where you work.

How to Create a Wellness Mission Statement?

This type of wellness strategy is obviously specific to your company, your organizational culture and the culture of wellness you’ve created in your workplace. There’s really no single “right way” to create a wellness mission statement. Here are a few things to keep in mind as you get the process going.

Convey Value: Really get to the core of why your program is important. This might even include an emotional appeal.

Encourage Engagement: Be sure your program sounds like something with which people want to be involved.

Be Reasonable: Only include realistic statements. Don’t shoot for the moon, but create a clear and reasonable wellness mission.

Be Relevant: Appeal to your employees by appealing to the work they do. Your statement should be relevant to what’s going on where you work.

Keep it Short and Sweet: Ensure your statement is clear and focused. Get rid of the extra language and the fluff. Keep it simple and powerful.

Choose Your Goals: Mission statements can be focused on short-term or long-term goals. Be sure to choose just one and really dig in.

Test It: Just as you build your program with employee feedback, you should build your mission statement with employee feedback.

Utilize It: Revisit your statement at any chance you get. Look at it to make goals, to keep it up to date or for simple motivation.

Focus on Substance: Official, professional language is nice. But when it gets in the way of a fruitful statement, it’s probably unnecessary.

Creating a wellness mission statement can be a very effective step towards an effective wellness strategy. Identifying the mission of your employee wellness program provides clarity, direction and relatability. It can even be pretty simple to create!

Have you created a wellness mission statement?

If you have, share it with us in the comments below. If you haven’t, do some brainstorming. We’d love to hear what you come up with in the comments, too.