The Change Communications Strategy for a Wellness Program: A Qualitative Case Stud

The purpose of this qualitative case study was to determine how an organization's human resources leadership communicated a major change initiative to employees. More specifically, the researcher explored the areas of communications strategy and tactical deployment of the organization's wellness program. As a large percentage of organizational change efforts fail, it is important to understand how organizational leaders communicate, implement, and sustain successful major change initiatives.;The study took place in a Midwestern industrial facility, employing approximately 200 employees at this particular site. Study participants included executive leadership, wellness program managers, human resources leaders, and members of the wellness provider. Participants answered a series of 16 to 22 open-ended questions during structured interviews, allowing for further exploration into the research topic and richness of qualitative data. Many themes emerged from the analysis of the qualitative date, including: how the company sought to educate its employees about healthcare costs and encouraging them to be healthcare consumers; making data-driven decisions in human resources; tactical deployment; support and sponsorship of the CEO; encouraging employees to tell their stories; evolution of the program; and the quantifiable impact of the program and measures of success. The company contact also provided archival data that helped to show quantitative results of the wellness program, further supporting the company's measures of success.;Discovering how an organization's human resources leaders communicated wellness program implementation, along with change management principles used during program implementation, could be instrumental in helping other organizational leaders develop effective strategies for major organizational change. The guiding conceptual framework of human resources interventions through change management theory helped the researcher to structure interview questions to answer the question of how an organization's leaders successfully crafted change communications, implemented the change, and sustained the change after 12 years of initial implementation. The organization's leadership in the wellness program clearly and consistently communicated to employees during the process of change and continued to hold regular employee communications meetings to inform employees of the results of the wellness program and its impact on employees' lives. During the study, it also became clear that the organization's leaders truly cared about the health of its employees and weren't just seeking to improve the bottom line. Other organizational leaders could use the example set by Company XYZ to move their organization toward any major change effort and sustain long-term change.