3 Ways Applauz Can Help With Your Employee Wellness Initiatives

Applauz points have real-world value. Therefore Points help employees understand the value of recognition.

For example, a manager might give 25 points for a small task but 200 points for a big win. Since Points are inherently valuable, receiving them feels great! Ultimately, receiving Points create more meaning for both the giver and the receiver, which leads to increased positive feelings.

Most importantly, employees can save up Points and spend them on tangible gifts in the Rewards Marketplace.

Closing the gap between employees and leaders

HR can build the most extensive wellness program, but if employees are stressed, overworked, and no one is listening to them, your employee wellness initiatives won't be of much use.

Building a workplace where wellness is a priority is an important tactic to prevent burnout, overwork, and exhaustion. So employees won't have to take that sick leave in the first place. 

The first step towards taking a preventative approach to wellness means closing the gap between leaders and employees. In other words, leaders must understand what's happening on the front lines.

Answering essential questions like: Are our employees tired, are they stressed, and is the workload sustainable? 

Suppose managers have weekly 1:1 meetings with their employees and discuss their stress levels, only for that information to fail to be passed onto the decision-makers. In that case, these 1:1 meetings become a formality to "go through the motions." As a result, employees will continue to grow even more tired and unheard.

Applauz can help businesses close the gap between employees and leadership. For example, tools for employee listening like Pulse Surveys are pivotal in keeping a consistent pulse on your employees' stress levels and their general feelings about their work environment.

You can also use Polls to dig deeper and ask more detailed questions. For example, the marketing department manager can send out a weekly poll private to their team only to ask, "how are your stress level this week," or "how many additional hours did you work this week."

Applauz enables virtual social activities and challenges

In March 2021, Applauz held a wellness scavenger hunt for its employees. Employees were encouraged to participate in any wellness activity. It could be running, yoga, skiing, hiking, cooking, drawing -- it was entirely up to them. Each activity earned them a point.

Every week, participants posted pictures of the activities they completed on the Newsfeed for everyone to see.

Posting these photos on the Newsfeed helped the hosts keep track of the activities and sparked conversations as people found out more about each other's interests and hobbies.

At the end of the month, the hosts tallied up the points to see which people performed the most activities. Prizes were awarded to the winners!

You can see how the Applauz platform can be used to support team-building and virtual activities in various ways. 

For example:

• The Newsfeed acts as a central hub to post and share photos and videos. This Sparks organic conversation and helps people to get to know each other’s passions and hobbies.
• Using Applauz Goals to easily reward participants and encourage them to participate. 
• Using Applauz Points keeps the stakes high and motivates participation as a real reward awaits the winners (or those who participate in the activity).

For example, at the start of our wellness challenge, the host set up a Goal for each employee to "participate in the wellness challenge." At the end of the month, anyone who participated, their Goal was marked as "achieved." Which automatically rewarded them with Applauz Points.

Additional Points were awarded to those who achieved first, second and third place. With those points, the winners could shop the Applauz Rewards Marketplace for real tangible gifts they could have shipped straight to their homes.

Bonus: Give more visibility to your new HR initiatives & announcements

Many businesses launch HR initiatives or programs only for employees to fail to use them. In many cases, employees don't even know they exist! 

You've worked hard on these initiatives and of course, you want your employees to take full advantage of these new policies or programs.

The Newsfeed can act as a platform to promote important HR initiatives. Any post made on the Newsfeed will stay on the Newsfeed. And can also be pinned to the top of the Newsfeed for any length of time, so it's the first thing people see when they log in.

That said, if your company uses Slack, you can use the Applauz Slack app so that anything posted on Applauz will automatically pop up in a Slack channel of your choice. This way, employees won't have to leave Slack to read these announcements. 

Everything You Need to Know

Employee wellness is more important than ever.

However, in today's world, supporting "wellness" at work should extend beyond physical wellness. It's about creating a happy and safe workplace that cares for the mental health and total well-being of employees. 

Applauz offers HR teams a valuable tool to address these critical wellness needs. 

Namely:

1. Recognition and appreciation needs
2. Employee listening 
3. Community and social needs

By supporting these needs, you will help your company cultivate a strong culture where employees feel heard, deeply valued, and connected.