.png)
In my first article I shared why I feel that financial wellness programs, in fact most wellness programs, are not broken and introduced the Transtheoretical Model of Change (TTM) outlined in the 1980’s by psychologists Dr. Prochaska, Dr. DiClemente, Dr. Norcross, and their team of researchers. (Prochaska PH.D, Norcross PH.D, & DiClemente PH.D, 1994)
In part two of this series, we dove into and further defined the six stages of change. What common traits the researchers discovered in each stage and how long people might stay in each stage.
In this article we will discuss what prompts people to change their behavior and provide insight into what you should be looking for in your wellness programs to help support this process.
As a quick recap, these researchers discovered that we humans typically go through six stages when we decide to make a change to any one habit: Precontemplation, Contemplation, Preparation, Action, Maintenance, then Termination. Sometimes we will work in sequential order through this process. But most of the time we tend to bounce, or cycle through, these stages as we work to make improvements in our lives.
If you haven’t read the first two in this series, I highly encourage you to do so.
With that said, let’s dive in…
The Other Key Dimensions of Change
Besides formulating and defining the TTM, the researchers discovered there were three other key aspects that influence us to take action and encourage us to change our behaviors. Understanding these will help you design and implement more effective wellness programs. It will also help you see where you are creating engagement in your programs, even if you cannot collect a tangible ROI.
These are decisional balance, self-efficacy, and the ten processes of change.
Decisional balance is where people are weighing the pros and cons of making a change. This is very important because it is the tipping point that will move someone from thinking about changing a behavior to starting to take steps to implement the change they seek.
Self-efficacy can be defined as someone’s confidence in themselves and their ability to make and sustain a change they desire, even in the face of challenging circumstances. This is typically where we see action and can start measuring ROI on our programs.
The process of change are ten experiential and behavior strategies and techniques that can be used to help facilitate, or encourage, a change in behavior. Implementing these strategies across your wellness programs will help support your employees in making effective, meaningful, and positive changes to their lives.
Decisional Balance
Anytime we decide to make a change in our lives we usually run through the pros and cons of staying where we are or going in another direction. It is a natural process that helps us to evaluate whether or not this change is going to be a positive enhancement to our lives.
When making a change to our health or our financial habits we have to take in a lot of factors in order to make the best decision we can. We ask ourselves questions like: what will we gain by making this change? What will I give up? How much effort is this going to take? Do we have the time? How will this impact our lives, our families, our friends? How long with this take? And so many more.
In searching for the pros to making a change, or the benefits this change is going to have for us, we confront inertia and procrastination. Most of us do not like change. It is uncomfortable. It requires work, doing things differently, maybe coming up with new routines. It might also force us to face something in our lives we are not happy with, or feel shame about, which happens a lot when it comes to financial decisions. Until our pros outweigh our cons, it can be challenging to make a new positive behavior stick around long enough to see the benefits.
In this process, we have to weigh how important this decision is to us and what impact it will have on our lives, which will be different for each of us. That is why it is helpful for wellness programs to be said in different ways and demonstrate different benefits. What might connect with one person, may completely miss the mark with another.
Self-Efficacy
Self-efficacy is defined by the level of confidence someone has in their ability to make and stick with a change they would like to make. It is their ability to stay the course and resist temptation. To keep at their new activity, overcoming possible setbacks or challenges, until it becomes a habit. As people move through the stages of change their confidence increases, with the biggest jump seen when people go from preparation to action.
As you might imagine, financial confidence is a big driver for success as is self-confidence in sticking with any wellness endeavor. The role of wellness programs is to help support people in building their confidence in whatever change they are seeking. This support will need to come in different forms as each of us has different needs and are at different stages in our change process.
One of the biggest issues for creating and sustaining self-efficacy is the ability to avoid relapse and to stick with the plan. Our ability to do so increases our confidence. When explaining the stages of change, I mentioned that the preparation stage can make or break someone’s ability to keep going. With that in mind, programs or services that will help people analyze their potential challenges and prepare for them will be extremely useful in helping them stay on track. When people can successfully overcome any challenges, they build upon their confidence in whatever area they are working on.
Process of Change
The process of change addresses how people change. It is the ten strategies and techniques used to facilitate movement from one stage to the next. According to Prochaska and the team of researchers there are two types: experiential and behavioral.
When I first studied these, all the other financial behavior strategies I have learned made so much more sense in how they fit into this world of financial wellness. And why each one has a place in assisting us in creating effective financial wellness programs.
The five experiential processes are consciousness raising, environmental reevaluation, dramatic relief, social liberation, and self-revaluation. These processes are critical in the earlier stages of change where people are doing a lot of internal work on deciding whether or not they want to make a change to their behaviors. We spend a lot of time in the precontemplation and contemplation stages because we are working through these processes, building upon our confidence and deciding if this change we are considering is really something we want to do.
The next five behavioral processes are used in the later part of our change journey. They are self-liberation, helping relationships, reinforcement management, counter-conditioning, and stimulus control. These are key processes in the implementation part of making a change because they are supportive in nature and help reinforce the positive behavior change we would like to see in our lives. We will lean on each one of these processes as we work to cement new habits, or behaviors, into our daily routines.
Implementing Effective Wellness Strategies
Knowing all this, how do we help people move through the processes of change? Encouraging them to not only utilize the wonderful wellness programs being offered but also helping them achieve their own personal well-being goals and objectives. With the overall objective of creating an atmosphere of employees who feel heard and seen, because their employer is helping them meet their personal goals for health and financial well-being. As well as satisfy management’s need for collecting some sort of ROI that can help them justify the wellness spend and continue to offer these wellness programs.
The structure of deployment of your wellness programs is critical to success and will need to cover all stages of change and the ten processes of change.
Because many of us will spend most of our time in the first few stages of change, wellness programs that offer content in the form of newsletters, emails, webinars, and now even text messages are basic table stakes. Remember in these early stages we are working on building awareness that there is even an issue that needs to be worked on or changed. Success stories from people who are relatable are also very helpful. In these earlier stages we must offer hope – hope that there is a better tomorrow and that they can achieve it.
Other tools such as automatic enrollment for retirement plans and guided decision technology for benefit plans are must haves. Here is where AI will continue to make a significant impact in helping people make decisions about their health and financial wellness and it will be important for decision makers to understand how these programs work and the impact they can have on their employees.
As people move along the stages for a specific wellness habit the other tools or resources you may want to consider offering will be self-paced programs, social support groups, and one-on-one financial &/or health coaching. Once someone decides they want to change something they might seek out some sort of support to assist them with making and sustaining these changes. This could come from online, AI driven tools, or from outside help and support such as financial or health professionals, advisors, and coaches, to other employees who have, or are working on, a similar well-being change.
We are social animals to begin with, change in isolation for most is not successful. Therefore, encourage sharing from other employees who have successfully used a program you are offering. Do video success stories, ask them to write a brief article about why the wellness program worked for them. Ask these employees to lead groups or discussions. People are encouraged to make changes when they see success from others they can relate to. And people who have had success tend to love sharing and helping others. Tap into that!
On the topic of rewards, recent research has shown that rewards are not the main driver to get people to change or use a program unless that reward is intrinsically driven. This can be a hard one for management but one way to tackle this is to have basic reward offerings for employees to choose from and ask for input on what types of rewards employees would find encouraging.
Holding competitions can be fun ways to get more people involved as well. This is a little bit easier to do on the health side than the financial side, such as walking competitions for health, but you could consider a department challenge of getting everyone signed up for the 401(k). The key is to make it fun and to not make anyone feel bad if they choose not to participate.
One other note about rewards, typically rewards are most successful for those that are in the Action and Maintenance stages. Which, if you recall, will be a small percentage of your employee population. And, because the well-being goals they seek are very personal in nature, not everyone will be working on the same wellness habit or benefit at the same time. So, feedback from employees will be key as well as flexibility to align them with current employee needs and focuses.
Don't forget to review your wellness offerings annually. Remember, we all have seasons in our lives where certain things are more important to us than others. Static offerings will become stale and unused, further perpetuating the feeling of unimportance, when really, they are just not meeting the current needs or expectations of your employees.
Final word
As I started this out, financial wellness programs are not broken. None of our wellness programs are broken. Saying that is like saying all humans are broken. We might be a bit wounded, but we are not broken. Changing ingrained habits takes time and effort. For us mere mortals that means we need to find internal reasons to take on a change to improve our overall well-being and support to stay the course.
Which means that our wellness programs need to continue to increase awareness, encourage action, provide support, and demonstrate hope of a better tomorrow. They are not one and done type of programs. Instead, they need to be flexible, multi-dimensional, evergreen offerings that reflect the current needs and desires of the employee base that they serve. When you put your focus here, you will have programs that your employees will rave about!!
Best of luck!!
On a side note:
If you would like to know more or have a group, such as SHRM or an advisor group you wish to share this information with, please reach out to me. My presentation on this topic has been well received and an eye opener for many.
Kelly
References
Prochaska PH.D, J. O., Norcross PH.D, J. C., & DiClemente PH.D, C. C. (1994). Changing for Good: The Revolutionary Program That Explains the Six Stages of Change and Teaches You How to Free Yourself from Bad Habits. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc.
Prochaska PH.D, J. O. & Prochaska Ph.D. (2016). Changing to Thrive: Using the Stages of Change to Overcome the Top Threats to Your Health and Happiness. Center City, Minnesota: Hazeldon Publishing
Comments