Why does your organization need a wellness committee?

To create an authentic culture of wellness within your organization, your employees need to feel connected to well-being initiatives. Building a committee dedicated to employee health is a great way to empower your team and advocate for sustainable workplace wellness practices.  

The committee’s role is to help:

• Lead communication efforts
• Model adoption of wellness initiatives
• Develop a feedback loop among your employees, people managers, and senior leadership
• Provide insight on new opportunities to boost the health and happiness of your team 
  

Interested in starting a wellness committee of your own? See our how-to steps and best practices below 👇

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Step One: Building your wellness committee

A crucial step in building your wellness committee is identifying reliable members that represent a cross-section of your employee population. 

A well-formed committee should have the following qualities:

• A minimum of three committee members, but no more than 12.  (There's no strict rule here; it all depends on your company size! There should be enough people to divide the work and realistically socialize ideas.)
• Accurately reflect the diverse demographic of your organization.
• Represent all departments and levels of leadership, including at least one executive or C-suite member.
• Include employees at every stage of their wellness journey (read: not just resident health gurus!) who share a personal interest in health.
• Constituents who can commit to at least one year as a committee participant. 
  

Once you have the green light to kick off the committee, you must invite your team to apply.  Below you’ll see an example of inviting your team to participate.  (You can use this sample application as a guide.)

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Finally, review your applications and select your committee members.  Let all applicants know the next steps, even those you didn’t elect to this year’s group.

Step Two: Running your wellness committee

Wellness committees need established guidelines and guard rails to collaborate successfully.

Our recommendations: 

• Create committee mission and vision statements that align with your company values.
• Determine an operating plan and budget.
• Assign committee roles.  Ideas include:

• A committee chair → ideally someone who has access to executive leadership
• A note-taker → responsible for recording meeting minutes + executing follow-up communications 
• A time-keeper → responsible for keeping meeting discussions on task + in line with meeting agenda
• A scheduling lead  → responsible for scheduling meetings and upkeeping committee calendar

• Structure a meeting agenda with time frames for each topic.
• Establish a communication framework between the committee, company leadership, and employees.
• Create a communication channel where employees can provide insight on current and future committee initiatives. 
  

Ensure each initiative has a leader, budget, implementation plan, and review process to set your committee up for success. 

Beyond the foundational structure of the committee's processes, you’ll want to develop a concise set of goals.  Here are a few examples:

• Build an inclusive environment where the committee can ideate and discuss sincerely.
• Design a well-rounded wellness programming calendar for employees.
• Expand your team’s knowledge of holistic wellness and share available resources. 
• Enhance employee well-being and empower the team to take time in their workday for wellness. 
• Assess the impact of wellness initiatives and explore future opportunities with regular employee surveys 

Step Three: Evaluating your  wellness committee

A thriving wellness committee requires clear goals, wellness program KPIs, and continuous evaluation.

We suggest senior leadership host quarterly check-ins with the committee to:

• Identify accomplishments and future opportunities.
• Ensure the committee is optimizing its time, resources, and budget.
• Document progress in employee well-being.
• Celebrate milestones as a group and with your organization as a whole.
  

And here is how we recommend you track progress:

• Evaluate employee wellness with a biannual Wellness Survey. (Pro tip: Offer an incentive when employees complete the survey so you continue to have an abundance of data to review.)
• Review engagement statistics provided by your wellness benefit provider(s).
• Examine the participation rates of wellness programming.
• Work with HR to identify the impact on employee retention and satisfaction metrics.
• Evaluate advancement toward committee goals.
• Assess Wellness Committee turnover and performance.

• Do members feel fulfilled by their contribution? 
• Are members extending their committee tenure?
• Are you successfully recruiting new members when necessary?
  

The impact of these efforts is far from qualitative.  A 2012 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that companies with wellness committees and supportive leadership were 4x more likely to improve employee health outcomes and 2.5x more likely to see a reduction in healthcare costs.1  At lulafit, we discovered companies committed to supporting their wellness committee see higher levels of engagement with wellness benefits.  These steps will help your organization prioritize the health and happiness of your employees and get the highest ROI from your wellness perks.