Wellness programs are designed to help improve the overall health and awareness of health related issues of employees in the worksite.

Although these wellness programs are set up to help person set, work toward and maintain healthy lifestyle options, they sometimes fail.

There are five main reasons health promotion programs are unsuccessful.  The first reason is because of lack of employee interest. It is critical when presenting a new health promotion program to staff members that every effort is made to communicate the all encompassing advantages of the health promotion program to the business and to the individual.

Next, health promotion programs can fail because of lack of staff resources. When a health promotion program is introduced but there are few resources to offer with the health promotion program, it will be difficult for an employee to want to take advantage of it.

As part of the previous reason for failure of a health promotion program, inadequate funding also can set a health promotion program up for failure. With little money to promote a health promotion program, it could be difficult to spread the word about the advantages of a health promotion program.

An all too frequent reason that health promotion programs do not reach optimal success is because the health promotion program and its coordinators fail to engage high risk workers. If high risk workers have the majority of the health issues in a workplace, they should be the most targeted individuals for a health promotion program.

To see 100% participation is the optimal goal, but to engage those with the most severe health concerns is a enormous priority.

Finally, the inability to enlist the support of senior level management is a significant reason why health promotion programs might not be successful. Without the endorsement, support and flexibility that senior level management can offer a health promotion program, it is far less likely that it’ll actually succeed.

Wellness programs succeed for just as many reasons as they fail. With engaged and aroused staff, obtaining wellness goals is attainable and promising.