WHE27: How to Engage Senior Leaders in Wellness Communications | with Mark Snyder from Owens Corning

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As with any important initiative, it’s vital to have the CEO and other senior leaders actively supporting workforce health engagement. These executives can help to:

• Articulate why the initiative is important to the organization’s purpose and business strategy,
• Create buy-in from all levels of the organization,
• Cultivate a supportive work environment,
• Dedicate resources, and
• Serve as a model and champion through both their “walk” and their “talk.”

Global manufacturer Owens Corning asks its senior leaders to inspire healthy living in employees, and to help employees know that leaders genuinely care about their individual health. Senior leaders use three methods to connect and cascade:

1.     WORDS: Key messages and follow-up questions for use in town halls, smaller meetings, and one-on-one conversations.
2.     STORIES: Personal and/or “springboard” illustrations of why health matters and what they could achieve together.
3.     ACTIONS: Leveraging leaders’ healthy behaviors to influence broader engagement.

To assist senior leaders, Owens Corning provided training and a toolkit that includes a template for their personal Words, Stories, and Actions, as well as the Senior Vice President of HR’s completed template as an example.

To talk about his company’s strategy for engaging senior leaders in workforce health engagement, our guest is Mark Snyder, Director of Benefits at Owens Corning. Owens Corning is a Fortune 500 manufacturer with about 15,000 employees in 27 countries. Owens Corning is most famous for its PINK® FIBERGLAS™ insulation and its mascot, the Pink Panther.

(This interview with Mark was recorded onsite at Owens Corning’s World Headquarters in Toledo, Ohio.)

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