4 Tips for Hosting an Employee Wellbeing Webinar

To help with your next initiative or training session, we pulled together tips around planning and hosting an employee wellbeing webinar with your Virgin Pulse resources as your backdrop! Below are step-by-step instructions and tips to host a wellbeing-focused webinar for your employees.

🎞️ Step 1: Frame Your Story Around Wellbeing

The first step is knowing what you want to talk about. Your webinar should be relevant, so we pulled together some ideas to help inspire your plan, but ultimately the webinar, whether informational or a training session, should tie back to your current corporate or cultural initiative. Use one or more of these ideas to build a strong connection and garner more interest:

• Focus on the Advantages: For example, connect and discuss the relationship nutrition has on lifestyle and mental health. If you are doing a cooking segment, mention the nutritional benefits of the meal you are preparing. 
• Make the Topic Part of an Overall Theme That Month: For example, if you conduct your webinar in November, you may want to focus on how nutrition can impact diabetes prevention since November is National Diabetes month in the US.
• Highlight Immunity: Use nutrition and activity as the main mechanism to boost your immune system if you are hosting a Fall or Winter webinar.
• Tie it Back to a Corporate Initiative As Part of a Bigger Story: For example, if the topic is around Community, use the webinar to promote your Corporate Responsibility initiative and encourage volunteering for your charity! 

⌛ Step 2: Build an Effective Agenda

• Account for Short Attention Spans: Check your slides so they have fewer words and more visuals to help improve comprehension and hold the attention of the group. Wrap up your session with a demo on how to access resources and benefits available to them that are related to the topic (Hint: demo a feature on the Virgin Pulse platform that can support your story).
• Invite a Guest Host: Webinars or online trainings are a great opportunity for a Wellbeing Champion or Onsite Coordinator to step in to present as well. Be sure to meet with any speakers beforehand to plan the script and visuals.
  
• Break the Ice: When putting together your outline, weave in one or more feedback sessions and ask for people to engage in the topic. Asking for comments is a great way to understand how they feel about the topic and what their connection is to it. You will be moderating but engage with the attendees on the topic to kick off the webinar and throughout. If you are trying to gain familiarity on a training topic, using polls can be effective to understand where people are at. Similarly, a poll to gauge interest can be fun. For example, if your topic is nutrition, have participants choose what their favorite meal is of the day.
• Be Prepared for Any Unexpected Hiccups: Testing is key, but being prepared for technical mishaps like Wi-Fi or sound issues is also important. In order to be ready to embrace any issues, include some extra padding of time in your session to account for this, plus additional time for Q&A at the end!

📣 Step 3: Prepare and Promote!

Planning for a successful and smooth webinar requires some key checkpoints that ensure you are interacting with employees prior and gaining their interest right away! Plus we have some testing pointers for the technical stuff too!

• Check for Availability: If it's manageable, survey employees to find the best date & time. If not, offer more than one session and be sure to record the sessions to share for employees to view at a later time. Take time zones into consideration if you host more than one session
• Open Registration: Getting the word out there can often be the hardest part. This is where the Virgin Pulse calendar tool can help! Create a calendar invite in the platform and couple it with an email and invitation through your organization's email calendar. (Hint: if you need guidance creating a platform calendar event, visit the Client Resource Center, password: VirginPulseCRC!)
• Garner Excitement & Incentivize: In your invite, include a brief summary of the webinar, date and time, plus how to register. Don't forget to mention any rewards if you are incentivizing employees to attend. (Hint: Reward attendees by collecting their employee IDs when they sign up to attend that way it's easy for you to drop rewards. Another way is to send out voucher codes after the webinar).
• Leadership Support: Ask someone in leadership to offer a statement around the theme and include a personal story as to why this topic is important to the business. Include their statement in the announcement to emphasize the importance of the session and the topic.
• Do a Dry Run: Iron out any issues before your live date by testing your script, the order of your visuals, and any technical components involved.
  

👍 Step 4: Hold Their Attention Post-Webinar

Following up with the participants or those that could not attend is important for sustained engagement. It’s also important to drive your employees somewhere after the webinar, including back to the platform for resources. Here are a few ways to make sure your webinar and initiative have a lasting impact:

Keep Up the Momentum all Month:  

• In the same month that you host the webinar or webinars, run a double points campaign around the specific topic.
• Challenge the participants to take action using one of the tools in the platform. Some examples are: start tracking a healthy habit, check out a specific guide/resource, or start a Journey, (Hint: choose the feature you decide to demo in the webinar to be consistent).

Send a Follow-up Email After the Session

• Remind the group of the reward they get for attending and when employees can expect to see the reward on their accounts. 
• Include links to resources along with tips so employees can learn more about the topic after the online session.
• Include a link to the recording of the webinar and post it somewhere for employees to access at a later time.

💻 Visit the Client Resource Center for guides, marketing assets, training, and more! (Password: VirginPulseCRC!)