Curating And Connecting Consumer Wellness

Old bulky wellness portals have been replaced by easy-to-use, high-engagement consumer wellness technology. Employees are using wellness technology in their personal lives and corporate wellness programs are embracing consumer-oriented technology to provide an improved wellness experience for employees. Incorporating wellness mobile apps like RunKeeper and wearable technology like Fitbit into an employee wellness program sounds like a great idea, but how exactly do you do it?

You need a game plan – and there are two important things to consider: curation and connection.

Curation

You want to leverage great consumer mobile wellness technology for your corporate wellness program, but where to begin? There are over 40,000 health and wellness mobile apps available. Some apps work well, others barely work. Running, cycling, yoga, meditation, nutrition tracking – the list goes on.

When constructing your wellness program it’s important to provide what we call “curated optionality.” Curated optionality means a limited but robust offering of mobile apps that cover various wellness activities and allows users to choose how to engage. Users are not restricted only to one mobile app or one type of activity, like walking.

At the same time, the list of wellness technology options should be limited and curated. Inundating users with mobile app options or allowing users to choose any app they want will not only be an administration nightmare, but also lead to a confusing and less effective user experience. Curation of the immense mobile app market will provide employees with app recommendations, which is important for employees who may be new to wellness technology.

If you’re looking for a quick list of effective wellness apps, reach out to your benefit consultant or wellness provider for some suggestions (or drop us a line)

Connection

After determining the menu of apps and devices available to employees, it’s important to find a way to create a coherent wellness experience. Multiple apps make this task more challenging.

A connected experience means that there is one central source to administer a multi-app and device experience. Data and activity is normalized and it doesn’t matter which app a users chooses to use (as long as it’s part of the curated menu of apps). Normalizing data becomes essential if you’re managing a competition or rewarding prizes based on activity when that activity is the result of various different types of wellness apps or devices. A technology driven wellness solution without a connected experience will fall flat – it will be challenging to keep track of activity and the activity will be meaningless without a common currency.

How do you build a connected wellness technology experience? Unfortunately without a sophisticated technology team and relationships with mobile app and wearable devices vendors, you probably can’t. Luckily you don’t need to because there are wellness technology companies who can provide this service for a lot less than you’d expect.