Corporate wellness can be hard—on multiple levels. Maybe you’ve planned a wellness event you thought was great. The details were in order, communication sent out, but it was a flop with very little participation and engagement.
That’s what we call a slipup. Something in your wellness program that just doesn’t go your way. Maybe mistakes were made, or challenges weren’t foreseen. Slipups happen.
The same type of slipups can happen in your employees’ health journeys. It can be easy to stray from even the best laid health plans. Maybe a night planned for the gym turned into happy hour with co-workers, or lunch plans fizzled into fast food or takeout.
Program-level and personal-level slipups incite the same feelings. And they’re not good feelings. Slipups can be frustrating! But if you have one flop wellness event, you shouldn’t scrap your entire program. Same goes for your employees. One unhealthy decision doesn’t mean the entire journey is a bust.
Because in health and wellness, slipups happen. It’s part of the process. Rather than focusing on how you and your employees can reach perfection and avoid slipups altogether, you need to plan for slipups and know exactly how you’ll bounce back.
Don’t Sweat Your Slipups
Like we said, slipups happen because we’re human. We aren’t perfect—and what would life be if we were?! Slipups do happen, but they don’t mean you’ve failed and they don’t mean it’s time to throw in the towel.
It’s important to accept slipups for what they are—part of the process. Yes, you can feel every ounce of frustration. And no, you don’t need to accept mistakes without learning from them. You do need to realize, though, that a slipup is not the end of the road.
Analyze, Don’t Criticize
A slipup is not a sign of some type of character flaw. Oftentimes, slipups are responses to specific stimuli. They’re caused by the specifics of a given situation, not by who you are as a person or what your program is as a whole.
It’s important to identify the cause of your slipups when they happen. Recognizing and putting a name to the stimuli that triggered your slipup allows you to prepare for it overcome that obstacle in the future.
Strategize Alternatives
As you start to realize why you’ve slipped up, and what caused you to stumble, you’ll be able to make a plan for future action. Take a look at what went wrong, and think about what could’ve happened to make it right.
Strategically think about alternative routes you could’ve taken to overcome the stimuli or trigger and avoid the slipup. What can you do differently next time? Keep your focus on potential solutions rather than the slipup that occurred.
Bounce Back Plan
Before you even have to deal with any slipups, it’s a good idea to have a bounce back plan. This type of plan is something you and your employees can do after a slipup to get you right back on track.
For your wellness program, that might mean having a brainstorm session with your wellness committee or even hosting an event you know your employees love. On a personal health journey, it might be a supercharged workout or an honest chat with a loved one to help you gain some perspective.
A bounce back plan will be specific to you and your program. Be sure it’s something exciting and different that will help trigger a mindset shift away from the slipup and towards the future.
Stay on Track
It’s important to remember that when it comes to health and wellness, there is no one path towards success. Everyone does it differently. There’s not one road to victory. What’s most important is the progress being made. A steady, forward motion—even through slipups—should be the focus.
For that reason it’s important to not only be flexible, but to be forgiving (of yourself and others!). As you continue to work towards a healthier lifestyle and a healthier workforce, the process will seem easier. That’s because you’re getting better. But it’s the slipups—and how you’ve overcome them—that have helped you move steadily towards your big health and wellness goals.
Slipups happen. As long as we’re human, our health and wellness journeys won’t be perfect. That’s true for the planning of your employee wellness program, but also for the execution of that program by your employees. It’s important to remember that a slipup is not a failure, but an opportunity to re-focus and move forward.
Take these steps back to your wellness committee next time you have a slipup, and share them with your employees on their own personal health journeys. You never know who needs a little perspective when it comes to overcoming wellness slipups.
What slipups have you witness in your wellness program? Let our other readers know in the comments below (that way they won’t feel alone on this sometimes-messy healthy journey).
