Winning Secrets: Wellous integrates wellness into the culture, by encouraging healthier snacking habits in the office pantry

Wellous Group believes in keeping wellness within reach for employees through initiatives such as fitness and sports subsidies, frequent free flow of complimentary fruits, and free supplements.

Wellness is a core part of Wellous Group, as is evident from the company's name. But what might not be as evident is that the company's mission is not only to make health easier, but to make wellness feel joyous for everyone – including, of course, its own workforce.

It is this line of thinking that Tan Li Lian, HR Director, Wellous Group, subscribes to, whilst keeping wellness within reach for employees through initiatives such as fitness and sports subsidies, frequent free flow of complimentary fruits, and free supplements.

This commitment saw Wellous Group being nominated as a finalist in the hotly-contested category of 'Excellence in Corporate Wellness' at the HR Excellence Awards 2024, Malaysia.

In this interview, Tan takes us through the motivations, challenges, and inspirations behind her and her team's success.

Q What was the motivation that sparked your passion & business case for pursuing your outstanding people strategy?

Wellness is a core part of Wellous, as you can probably tell from our name. We are a company whose vision is not just to make health easier, but to make wellness feel joyous for everyone – including, of course, our own. So there really isn’t any special motivation behind our people strategy per se; we are simply practising what we preach and keeping wellness within reach through initiatives such as fitness and sports subsidies, frequent free flow of complimentary fruits, and free supplement products.

You could say that wellbeing is innate to – rather than integrated into – our culture and philosophy.

Q Looking back, can you share a challenge that you overcame in your journey of HR excellence? How did you triumph?

This is actually more of a funny human story than a Human Resources challenge. We used to stock our pantries with packet snacks. Naturally, our employees loved them. But as we all know, what they love may not necessarily be good for them – which in this case, turned out to be addictive snacks that contained preservatives and emulsifiers, and fried in an unhealthy amount of oil.

So we decided to one day swap these snacks with fruits, in a bid to encourage healthier snacking… well, you can imagine the ensuing uproar. While not a full blown mutiny, the resistance was enough to keep the department busy for weeks until everyone eventually came to their senses.

Now each time we see employees sharing a watermelon as happily as they did with snacks, we can’t help but smile to ourselves knowing it was a challenge worth enduring after all.

Q Beyond the recognition, what impact do you hope your feature in the HR Excellence Awards would have on the HR community and manpower landscape?

We are a rather young company on an ambitious path to revolutionise supplements into functional foods that are not just more nutritious but also more enjoyable.

We know that passion and talent alone would not be enough to get us far on this journey – they can fuel us forward, but to steer us towards the right direction, we need the right culture. So we diverted a considerable amount of resources and focus into building one. One that’s tailored based on who we aim to become and crafted based on the values we believe in. One that we are immensely proud to call our own.

We hope that our nomination for this prestigious award will inspire others on the same trajectory to do the same: continue building and, more importantly, believing in their own unique cultures.

Read more interviews on why organisations have won trophies for their HR practices - head over to our Winning Secrets section! 

Photo: Provided (featuring the Wellous team)