For many of your employees, their very close friends and family members are likely to be the most important people in their lives and the ones with whom they spend the most time. So are you leveraging these valuable resources with your wellness communication messages?

When you keep friends and family members in the know about wellbeing initiatives, you:

Increase the likelihood that your employees will pay attention to what you’re trying to teach them and act on that health advice. Why? Because they might see the information and encourage your employee, to take action together. The close friend or family member becomes an at-home ally in your employee wellness efforts.

Invite them to work directly with employees to improve health and wellbeing using the resources available through the organisations wellbeing initiatives.

Improve the chances that the family as a whole adopts a healthy lifestyle. A family that is healthy – both physically and emotionally – means your employee can focus on work while at work instead of being distracted by home issues. 

With a little planning, but not a whole lot of extra work, you can easily include close friends and family members in your health and wellbeing communications:

When you send communications to employees at work, include a message encouraging them to forward the information to close friends and/or family members.

You might also send a specific email explaining how the organistion wants to share health and wellbeing information with their friends and families. 

The benefits of including families in wellness efforts are not strictly financial. A 2016 Harvard Business Review survey found that 70% of participants in employee well-being programs felt including their families in the program was an indication their employers supported them. Extending wellness support to close friends and family members only strengthens that connection and could even make an employee more productive.