Implementing an
Engaging Wellness Program with a Remote Team
A case study of Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Canada
The Challenge
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Encouraging higher levels of engagement with wellness initiatives
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Offering a wide range of support without bogging down theHR team down with event planning and scheduling
The Solution
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Offering consistent and comprehensive wellness programming with Cyno
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Giving employees the ability to engage with wellness together and attend regular group events with coworkers
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Dedicated Account Manager to ensure a smooth onboarding, encourage engagement and provide ongoing support to the HR team
The Results
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LLSC, an 80 person company, had 60% of their company use Cyno within the first 3 months after launch day. LLSC employees booked 329 appointments on the Cyno platform
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Immediate increases in scores for employee wellness and employee sentiment
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Alleviated the workload for HR team
For the past couple of years, HR teams everywhere have struggled to improve one key performance metric: engagement.
Wellness and employee engagement depend on each other, working together to create truly happy people. Job satisfaction positively impacts their health and feeling well encourages them to be happier in the workplace. However, planning wellness initiatives to encourage this behaviour takes up a lot of an HR team's time and is difficult to get the desired participation.
This case study will show the positive impacts that a comprehensive Employee Wellness Plan (EWP) can have on your employees’ health, engagement, and overall satisfaction. We found that the three keys to implementing a successful wellness program are: having something for everyone, engaging with wellness together, and buy in from the top.
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About
Their mission - We won’t stop until there is a cure for leukemia, lymphoma, myeloma, myelodysplastic syndromes and myeloproliferative neoplasms. We improve the quality of life of people affected by blood cancers and their families by funding life- enhancing research and providing educational resources, services and support.
In Canada, there are currently 155,593 people living with or in remission from one of the 137 types of blood cancers. Our story may have started out of a concern for leukemia research, but today, we are the largest registered charitable health agency dedicated to supporting the blood cancer community in Canada. Our focus has grown and now includes:
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Funding research from bench to bedside
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Rethinking how a person navigates their blood cancer experience
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Providing targeted blood cancer information
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Offering tools for psychological and emotional support
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Empowering Canadians to take charge of their blood cancer experience through practical support and advocacy
The Challenge
Companies have started tasking their HR teams with increasing engagement rates for wellness programs but finding something to cater to everyone's different needs and shifting calendars seems impossible.
Throughout the pandemic LLSC had been focused on their employees’ mental health and looking for ways to support them in a meaningful way. They had a therapist running group sessions with employees attending and sharing struggles, but were only able to reach about 25% of their employees with this initiative. LLSC wanted to add programs like yoga and exercise classes but, because they are a small HR team, they knew it would be too difficult to manage different providers while organizing times that would work for all their staff.
The Solution
LLSC decided to offer their people an Employee Wellness Plan (EWP) with Cyno. This gave their employees access to everything wellness in one place and enabled them to easily book their own wellness sessions of any kind to attend on their own or with a friend.
"Once we found Cyno, VOILA, everything we were looking to offer our amazing employees on one platform" - Lisa Robb, Director, Talent & Culture
Cyno is increasing the accessibility and convenience of healthcare. The EWP supports corporations who wish to extend virtual wellness services to their employees. Through the EWP, corporations gain access to the Cyno platform to book live one-on-one or group health & wellness services with a wide range of providers.
Traditional corporate benefits are the same for every employee and not nearly enough attention is paid to the individual. Cyno prides itself on the vast array of choice we offer to employees searching for an individualized path to their wellness. We give people the ability to build their own team of wellness experts to meet with as much as they need.
"Cyno was the one turnkey platform we found where everything is available" - Sofia Guay, Business Unit Director, Revenue
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The Results
LLSC employee count: 80
Within the first 3 months after launch day, 60% of their company had used Cyno. LLSC employees booked 329 appointments on the Cyno platform, 150 of these bookings were for group classes and 179 were for 1-on-1 sessions. It is worth noting the types of services that employees were drawn to book: Fitness services constituted 54% of all bookings, Mental health services 30%, Nutrition services at 9%, rehabilitation at 4% and Financial wellness 3%.
"It has been so gratifying as an HR Team to have introduced Cyno to our staff and hear the positive feedback knowing we are offering our employees a tool that literally has something for everyone."
- Lisa Robb, Director, Talent & Culture
The Insights
1. Having something for everyone
LLSC's main struggle while trying to organize an in-house wellness solution was a lack of engagement because they didn't have time in the day to consistently schedule all the providers needed to engage more of their work force.
This is a common problem when it comes to supporting wellness. Giving meaningful coverage to one aspect of wellness seems exclusionary but providing everything seems impossible. Wellness spending accounts have been the answer for a lot of companies but these still leave it to the employee to find what they need, where they can get, times it will work and then the added stress of those wellness account dollars running out.
Every employee has different needs, different wants and different schedules, so having something for everyone is essential when trying to implement an engaging wellness program.
Cyno not only allows teams to offer a full catalogue of wellness services but gives employees direct access to those services from home and even helps them figure out which ones they may need.
"People go out of their way to share the benefits of the platform, they’re posting on our channels about how much they love it"
3. Buy in from the top
It's no secret that buy in from the top will help anything disseminate throughout an organization, but with wellness especially, it is important for your people to see higher ups making time for these initiatives too.
It can be hard to get management to really embrace wellness and even harder to get them to share their experiences with it, but showing this really lets people know that its not only okay but encouraged to take time to work on yourself.
LLSC's management did a fantastic job with this, actively using the platform, discussing it and promoting it on internal channels. Their excitement about the platform helped imbue so much of their organization with the same attitude and has resulted in fantastic uptake over the course of their first couple of months.
"Everyone has found something that they really connect with"
2. Engaging in Wellness Together
Another major factor in the successful adoption of a wellness program is engaging with it together. Whether that be going to group classes together, sharing experiences internally or just recommending providers to co-workers. Knowing that others are working to better themselves and having it be known that the company actively encourages this behaviour will, in turn, help those people that need an extra push to start working on their wellness.
LLSC not only organized private trivia events for their team but have actively encouraged the sharing of anecdotes and suggestions on internal channels. They found that people began to actively participate in group classes together and you can see that their healthy split between group and one-on-one classes resulted in very high overall usage for their company.
Engaging in wellness together lets employees know that this isn't just a program being offered, it is a part of who you are as an organization and that the health of every employee is valued.
"We want happy employees that are engaged and motivated to do their best work"
