Here’s what it takes to communicate about wellness at work

Your organization can have the best benefits, the best employee value proposition around, without employees even knowing such things exist. Similarly, vague notions of culture extolled by leadership—pizza Fridays, generous PTO and even upskilling opportunities—are detrimental when a culture exists where employees don’t feel that they have the time to engage with these things while on the clock. To an overwhelmed employee, such perks may just seem like more work. Meanwhile, leaders often forget that they can’t create culture, but only nurture the conditions that allow it to thrive.

All of this makes it crucial to think deliberately about how you socialize wellness at work. During Ragan’s Social Media Conference at Disney World this past spring, Stacie Barrett, director of internal communications at Domino’s, shared what’s working for her team.

Barrett reminded the audience that Domino’s is 99% franchised, “which makes the world of internal communications all the more fun.” This means 700 franchisees, the people who are advocating and telling the brand stories to her employees. She cited one franchisee, Dan, who started out as a delivery driver and lived out of his car. Now he has 100 stores.