Culture Check: A pivotal first step towards employee wellbeing

by Personify Health on January 7, 2024

We know recent times are tough for everyone, especially for employers who might be experiencing an increase in employee voluntary turnover. Turnover disrupts teams, adds hiring and training costs to bottom line and negatively impacts morale. Strikes, layoffs, and back-to-office mandates are other realities adding to headwinds employers are facing. As you and your HR leaders manage staffing changes, there’s an even greater task ahead —Making the workplace a place people want to work.

According to one of our recent studies, 41% of employees surveyed say their mental and emotional health is most likely to have an impact on their ability to do their job. And their company's health & wellbeing program—and overall culture—can play a huge part in supporting their needs.

More than a collection of unwritten rules, a company’s culture demonstrates the core values embodied and reinforced by your leadership team along with the perceptions of what’s valued at your organization. Interestingly, nearly half (42%) of employees surveyed don’t feel their employer cares about them as a core value. Yet 87% of employers feel they demonstrate they care for employees.

Employee perception is key and support for health and wellbeing as a core value, is fundamental to successful culture.

Your path to a stronger, healthier company culture

For over a decade, experts noted that leveraging company culture has the greatest impact on wellbeing initiative effectiveness and improving your population’s health. According to a study conducted by Mary Marzec, PhD, Personify Health's Sr Scientist and Science Advisory Board, higher culture scores are associated with higher work engagement and lower employee stress and depression—independent of individuals’ health status, gender, and job class. Her research spans a decade showing higher job satisfaction, lower intention to leave, higher productivity, lower stress, lower depression symptoms, higher physical activity and better health indicators are all associated with a supportive culture.

Despite the impact, validated metrics and tools to provide a systematic approach for culture have been lacking. That’s where Personify Health's Culture Check comes in! Available at no additional charge.

Culture Check focuses on fostering a health and wellbeing culture as a whole – regardless of where individuals are in their health journey. It works for any type organization across all industry and work types. Backed by scientific research and validated tools, Culture Check delivers actionable tactics and shows year-over-year change.

How it works

3-Minute Assessment

Members complete a 3-minute assessment to capture perceptions on support for health and wellbeing across seven dimensions of cultural support.

Actionable Data & Reporting

Culture Check provides actionable data leveraging our reporting dashboard. All results are delineated by job class. Standard reporting also provides a location heatmap that delivers an overview of location-specific results. Data also segmented by work status (onsite, hybrid, remote) to inform strategies.

Going Further

For clients that want even more, Environment Scans and Leader Interviews are additional options. These tools add levels of information to further inform tactics and engage stakeholders. The process informs leaders of resources available to their teams they might not be aware of. It also elevates leaders' input for immediate consideration and actions. Capturing information from multiple sources yields stronger engagement in the process and for your wellbeing initiative.

Hear from a peer

Dr. Marzec and Personify Health client, Karen Personett, Manager Wellness & Health Promotion from DTE Energy (2023 Koop Award winner), came together to discuss DTE Energy's experiences with Culture Check. Here are top takeaways from their discussion:

How do you get leadership buy-in on implementing Culture Check?

Align Culture Check with your wellbeing strategy: Your Personify Health Team can help support you and your team determine how you want to work your wellbeing strategy, where you want to go with it, then layering Culture Check as part of your vision. Additionally, it's valuable to have a leading metric around your culture and wellbeing program.

Connect health and wellbeing to business goals: As part of your initial planning, make sure to discuss what’s important to your organization, then determine how health and wellbeing contributes to your overall business goals.

Find the right "in" for your organization: For DTE Energy, their "in" was safety and engagement—and safety had a roadmap that Karen linked to the wellbeing program and leveraged ‘We’ve done this before, I know we can create a culture of something [insert your goal or desired state]. So, that gave us the confidence.”

When is a good time to implement Culture Check? Are there certain red flags?

Find a cadence that works for your organization: Find the right cadence and timing that works for your organization. Consider other initiatives that might be running and annual plans that might be in development.

In response to not wanting Culture Check to interfere with other active initiatives, Dr. Marzec noted “that’s an organization’s decision, but it’s a short enough assessment that it doesn’t really interfere (20 questions, no more than 3 minutes).” Since it’s in through the platform, it’s separate from other initiatives and promotions they may have go out through their general email because the members will see it come up as a Card or Banner” in the app, so it won’t get lost in the shuffle.

Furthermore, Karen shared a tip “to be strategic, implement it at a time to give you enough time to incorporate it into your annual strategy and plan.”

Has a client ever discovered something they can’t do at the moment and how do you address that?

Prioritize immediate action items and include unresolved issues in your long-term roadmap: Personify Health can support you in helping to identify action items that are more immediate, things that can be done within the next few months, or items that require a more strategic approach and planning.

“There are always things that comes up that you can’t address that right away. However, the earlier you know about a dynamic, then you can at least be sensitive in your messaging, your communications, and you can put it on your long-term roadmap. Maybe it isn’t something you can fix in the next three months, but there’s nothing wrong with putting it on the roadmap and communicating that out to people that at least they’ve been heard,” said Dr. Marzec.

Recognize that some long-term plans can become high priorities: Additionally, Dr. Marzec shared “that there are things that I think are further out, but when I service them for the organization, they actually become a higher priority when the stakeholders see the results of the reports or the suggestions. I’ve been amazed that clients have actually moved faster than I initially anticipated because I might have been too humble in what I assumed their appetite for change is, but you’d be amazed as the power of a lower score in a location.”

Interested in learning more?

Curious to read more about DTE Energy and their experiences? Read their success story to see how this Detroit-based energy company created a culture of health & wellbeing for their 11K+ employees.

Ready to power up your approach with an actionable health strategy? Contact your Account Management Team to discover how you can move from best practices to next practices with Culture Check.

Topics: Wellbeing Research and Insights