Awakening the Wellness Warrior: Top 7 tips for capturing senior leadership support to drive your wellness efforts

1. Awakening the Wellness Warrior:
Top 7 tips for capturing senior leadership support
to drive your wellness efforts
by Katrina Walton, Director, Wellness Designs

2. Katrina has built a reputation as a pioneer of
workplace wellness in Australia.
She has over 18 years experience in the
development and management of multi award-
winning programs for small to large organisations,
nationally and internationally.
Katrina is passionate about spreading the wellness
message, whether it be through consulting,
publishing, speaking, training or tweeting!
In her spare time, you'll find Katrina relaxing in a
yoga pose, enjoying a nice glass of Barossa Shiraz
or planning her next trekking expedition.
Director / Workplace Wellness Strategist
Wellness Designs
BAppSci (HMS)(hons1), Grad Cert OHS, Masters Public Health (hons1),Cert IV
Training & Assessment

3. Senior leadership support is the ‘make or
break’ of a successful health and wellness
strategy.
As wellness practitioners (or equivalent)
many of us struggle with how to:
• demonstrate the initial business case
• engage senior leaders and encourage
them to ‘walk the talk’
• demonstrate the ongoing value on
investment

4. Perceived or actual barriers may be at an:
• individual level (e.g. dealing with time-
poor senior leaders)
and/or
• organisational level (e.g. dealing with
competing business priorities).

6. What’s keeping
your CEO up at
night?
Is the company
trying to control
costs? Attract top
talent?
What are their
passions outside
of work? Their
wellness goals?

7. What are your employees health and wellness needs? What existing
resources and/or facilities do you have at hand? What is the cost of poor
health and wellbeing to the organisation?

8. What are the competition doing? Is the
competitor down the road gaining a
competitive edge from their wellness strategy?
If so, your CEO will want to know.

9. What is the perceived value of investing in
employee wellness? This will stem from the key
drivers for adopting a wellness strategy in the first
place. For example, being a great place to work or
reducing the cost of workplace injuries.

10. This is not the time to replicate
another company’s strategy or
choose a ‘one size fits all’
solution from a provider. It
must be tailored to your
organisation’s business
objectives, structure,
demographics and culture.

11. Tip#5: Be Realistic
It won’t happen overnight! Stick with
your wellness strategy and it will reap
benefits in the short-term (e.g. improved
staff morale) and long-term (e.g.
improved productivity).
Research and experience suggests it
will take 3-5 years to embed wellness
into the ‘DNA’ of your organisation.

12. Tip #7: Ensure leaders
understand their role
From the outset, senior leaders
will play a critical role in your
strategy’s success. This
includes:
• allocation of resources
• policy development
• accountability
• active involvement

14. Keep employee wellness front of mind. Have your “elevator
pitch” ready. Grab every opportunity to spruik the benefits of
your strategy to senior leaders. Keep it succinct (no longer than
2 minutes or length of an elevator ride) and meaningful.

15. Bonus Tip #9: Measure
& communicate the
results
You can’t manage what you can’t
measure. You will need to
demonstrate the impact of your
wellness efforts, both for
employees and the organisation.
This will also help to avoid the
‘nice to have’ tag.

16. When you put the “right thing” with
the “smart thing” = the “wise thing”