Speakers offer well-being insights and strategies at Ragan’s Workplace Wellness Conference

Exclusive research unveiled at the event reveals growth and top priorities of burgeoning wellness industry; the event featured speakers from Facebook, IBM, Intel, PwC, PepsiCo, Nvidia, VMware, and more.

By Ragan Staff
April 14, 2021

Ragan’s Workplace Wellness Conference, held last week, featured some of the biggest names in the wellness space, plus executives from some of the top organizations in the country, including Intel, VMware, IBM, PepsiCo, Citrix, Facebook, Microsoft and others. It kicked off with some groundbreaking exclusive research into the fast-growing wellness industry.

The conference, offering strategies and tactics for boosting employee well-being, was held virtually on Wednesday, April 21. It was keynoted by the entrepreneur and corporate wellness thought leader and best-selling author Laura Putnam, who laid out a the elements of a next-generation workplace wellness strategy.

Sessions ranged from the rise of the wellness profession during the last 13 months and major trends for 2021, to deep dives into mental-health, work from home, DE&I, measurement, and the convergence of wellness and comms.

In a session that covered the rise of the wellness discipline over the last 13 months, speakers Licy Do Canto, managing director at APCO Worldwide, and Carrie Altieri, vice president for strategy and communications at IBM, noted the unique nature of 2020-2021.

And then they suggested what wellness professionals and their allies in related departments, including comms, HR, benefits and more ought to do.

Meanwhile, the research, parts of which were announced at the start of the event, included these findings:

Drilling down from the top areas of organizational concern, wellness pros were asked to name their own department’s top priorities for this year. Here, several things converged. At the top was more workforce engagement with well-being programs, cited by 30% of respondents. Close behind was improvement in workplace wellness initiatives, which 27% of survey participants cited. These two priorities were followed by two items related to adjacent departments: Communicating wellness initiatives with the whole workforce, and better integrating those initiatives the benefits and HR offerings.

Among the companies represented by the event’s speakers were the following: