Synergy Health
Ensuring Employee Wellbeing in the Digital-first Era

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the way we work and live. The prolonged period of isolation, the struggles to juggle a range of personal and professional responsibilities, and reduced opportunities to socialize have triggered stress, fear, and uncertainty among the employees. According to WHO, continuous isolation is leading to several mental health issues or exacerbating the existing ones, resulting in increased levels of alcohol and drug use, insomnia, and anxiety. Today, the biggest hurdle for organizations is to help their employees cope with this stress of physical isolation and disrupted routines and keep them focused and productive.

To this end, organizations need to undertake a more strategic, long-term approach to employee wellbeing rather than implementing ad hoc, off-the-shelf template programs that generally revolve around a one-size-fits-all model to address the needs of every employee.

Enter Synergy Health. Working with clients, the company launches sustainable employee wellbeing initiatives that facilitate real behaviour change. Synergy Health’s digital platform allows for an easy-to-implement, comprehensive range of wellbeing, safety, and organizational development programs, designed to enhance employee performance.

"Wellbeing programs are often criticized for not engaging the employees that would benefit the most. In our experience, it can often occur when a program focuses too much on promoting ‘health improvement’. This tends to attract those that are already health-conscious and participating - or those that have just experienced a health scare,” says Brad Norris, MD, Synergy Health. Unlike such traditional health improvement programs, Synergy Health allows employees to promote the factors that are already impacting their daily decision making. For example, the desire for employees to promote personal values like recognition, teamwork, fun, success, achievement through engaging in wellbeing initiatives.

Driving Employees through Behaviour Change Frameworks

This comprehensive platform is built on our 4-stage formalized behaviour change framework to ensure the optimum outcome for its clients. “We have learnt that if a platform does not contain each of these layers, outcomes are compromised,” Norris says.

The first layer, awareness, enables employees to complete a Wellbeing Scorecard and receive feedback on their wellbeing status. Their results also determine what they view on their personalized dashboard as the content is populated based upon specific needs. More importantly, the Wellbeing Scorecard can be customized with additional questions and responses as selected by an organization. This may include questions relating to safety, culture, job satisfaction, or engagement. “Organizations can track metrics identifying behaviour change in the areas they are most interested in influencing. Employees’ responses to these questions can also direct them to customized initiatives that will benefit them,” says Martin Leighton, Global Partnerships Manager, Synergy Health.

The platform’s education layer allows employees to easily access information and content, such as articles, clips, podcasts, public health and awareness campaigns, and key feature topics that specifically address their unique needs.
Not stopping there, the platform equips organizations with the capability to build their own customized calendar of initiatives and have specific content added and featured on the platform. This can include content that focuses on key areas the organization most wants to influence. Selected third party suppliers such as EAP and Health Insurers can add content directly onto the platform on dedicated pages to minimize administrative demands.

Next, the motivation layer allows employees to complete a range of challenges in teams or as individuals throughout the year. Team-based challenges include various forms of gamification such as points, leader boards, collaborative activity functionality, photo uploads, and prizes. Organizations can also have customized team-based and individual challenges created that specifically address their requirements. This can focus on specific wellbeing, safety, or organizational development initiative or a topic that meets their broader strategic objectives.

Last but not least, the reward layer enables employees to receive points based on their participation in the program. Bonus points are earned for engaging in initiatives that specifically address their wellbeing needs. Employees can access additional benefits through the program as they earn more points and improve their status level. Also, instead of rewarding generic behaviours, organizations can selectively reward participation in initiatives that will most benefit the organization. Leighton says, “In addition to addressing general wellbeing, safety and organizational development topics, our key point of difference is that we customize our programs at each layer of our behaviour change framework to specifically meet the needs of the organizations we work with. This allows them to achieve all their goals and build a productive workforce.”

In a nutshell, Synergy Health’s platform addresses both the ‘needs’ and ‘wants’ of each employee. It rewards employees for participating in wellbeing, safety, and organizational development initiatives that address their ‘needs’ (as identified by the Wellbeing Scorecard) and rewards them with points for participating in their chosen initiatives (‘Wants’). These initiatives are diverse in range (competitive steps-based challenge, the team focused kindness challenges, the thinker’s mental agility challenge, to name a few), which plays a critical role in attracting a broader range of employees.

Due to this diversity, Synergy Health has enabled several clients during the COVID-19 lockdown to implement team-focused and fun challenges.
It helped businesses better promote collaboration and connection to reduce the feelings of isolation. Also, they have been able to incentivize participation to keep employees engaged and allow them to work remotely from home more effectively. “We are communicating messages and education in different and engaging ways to help employees build their immunity through nutrition, exercise, sleep and mental health,” Norris prides.

Success Stories Speaking for Themselves

Several businesses today work in liaison with Synergy Health to rightly implement their employee wellbeing, safety, and organizational development initiatives. For instance, the company has been working with KPMG for close to three years. During this time, it has implemented a range of customized initiatives on its platform as part of its ‘Wellbeing@ KPMG’ program. To date, more than 90 per cent of employees within KPMG have participated in one or more initiatives hosted on the platform. In collaboration with KPMG, Synergy Health created a three-week team-based challenge as part of KPMG’s overall wellbeing program. A key goal for KPMG was to reinforce senior leadership support for wellbeing across the organisation and encourage communication. The first step was to engage with KPMG’s leaders for their contributions. Each contributing leader could select a daily activity/challenge from an extensive menu of options provided by Synergy Health, or they could create their own.

“In addition to addressing general wellbeing, safety and organizational development topics, our key point of difference is that we customize our programs at each layer of our behavior change framework to specifically meet the needs of the organizations we work with”

The guiding principle for all activities was the need to promote an element of wellbeing. Examples included acts of gratitude, having a break from technology, connecting with colleagues, and engaging in the form of play. Participants needed to understand who chose each activity from KPMG’s leadership team and why they chose it. “We profiled each sponsoring leader with their photo and personal explanation for why they chose the activity. Their profile was then displayed alongside their chosen activity within the challenge,” Leighton elucidates. Synergy Health’s unique platform facilitated the customized elements of the challenge, simplifying administration, and enhancing the employee experience.

The outcome of the partnership was intriguing. Seventy per cent of participants said they learned more about the senior leadership team; 85 per cent of participants said they interacted with their colleagues more as a result of the challenge; 99 per cent of participants said they would recommend the challenge to others. Hannah Gray, the Assistant HR Manager at KPMG, mentioned, “The Challenge was fantastic! We had a very high participation rate and the feedback from participants was overwhelmingly positive. The team at Synergy Health did an amazing job, partnering with us to create a unique challenge with great variety and KPMG flavour.” The success of this engagement was also resonated during the COVID-19 lockdown period when the follow up to the original version was created and delivered. Almost 96 per cent of candidates reported that the challenge had a positive impact on their wellbeing and 88 per cent of participants highlighted that the challenge gave them a reason to stay in contact with their colleagues during lockdown isolation.

Such instances of client success have enabled the company to maintain a higher customer retention rate while giving them the impetus to innovate and expand. Norris mentions that it is a reflection of being able to assist its clients year after year as their needs change over time. To indeed have an impact on behaviour, organizations should be investing in platforms that can grow and evolve as their needs change over time.

Currently, Synergy Health continues to grow globally and work on more complex projects that have unique requirements. “When our unique platform is forged with an organization that has a passionate team like us about promoting wellbeing, safety and engagement, we can create a program for their people. We continue to broaden our understanding of the nature of the initiatives that best work across a range of environments. Our client base continues to benefit from these key learnings,” Norris concludes. “Together with our clients, we can create a unique program for a unique workplace and their unique people.”