A couple of weeks ago two dozen+ of my HR Executive Peer Group members met to discuss the shift from “wellness” to “well-being” strategies. The latter is a more comprehensive and holistic approach to defining organizational success than our traditional wellness initiatives. Wellbeing strategies often include physical, emotional, social, career and financial components.

I walked away from this discussion with a lot of nuggets, but four stood out:

Long-term Flexible Approach. Build a multi-year strategy and gauge over time if you are moving in the right direction. At the same time, keep experimenting, do lots of pilots and tests. Your mantra should be: “Let’s try this and if it doesn’t work we will try something different.” The key to effective wellbeing strategies is to keep them fresh, dynamic and evolving. We need to look at what we are doing as a journey, not a program.

Be Aware of Cause and Effect. If we want well-being strategies to fix something in our organizations, we need to carefully analyze what is cause and effect. For example, if the stress in our organizations is actually caused by one or a handful of leaders, we have the option of focusing on the stress or stopping the cause of stress-muster up the courage to take on the executives!!! I have an idea-get them a coach!!!

Misaligned Expectations. We are somewhat jaded here in the US compared to many other parts of the world. We have had all these strategies and benefits thrown at us for years and there is now a sense of entitlement. Ask yourself: is there misalignment of expectations and what we want well-being strategies to fix? Perhaps fixing the expectations is where the focus should be not anywhere else?

Privacy Is Huge. The best organizational approach is to fight the battle of privacy with total transparency. Share exactly what data you will get and what the reports will look like. If you can demonstrate that you are interested in and getting data in the collective a lot of anxiety may get put to rest before any issues arise.

What do you think? Do any of these nuggets resonate with you? What others do you want to see on the table.