Wellness Challenge Engine

Client Intro

The Working Towards Wellness program at Chrysler Canada Inc. (CCI) is a joint venture aimed at improving the health and well-being of Chrysler Canada employees and their families. The program has been actively in place since 2002, and is presently comprised of twelve committees that are established at each CCI location across the country. Each committee is coordinated by the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit and is comprised of management, union, safety, medical, administration and other interested employees and retirees.

The Challenge

The Working Towards Wellness program required an interactive and engaging way to promoting healthy living among Chrysler Canada employees. In order for specific facets of the program to effectively improve health and wellness metrics, Chrysler Canada employees would have to disclose confidential information such as current weight, age and lifestyle choices.

A web-based application, with interactive dashboards and user maintained Profiles, may provide a private space for employees to enter current health metrics as well as a way to log personal wellness goals.

Introducing healthy competition in the form of online contests, group and team challenges, as well as personal challenges, would likely promote greater participation in the program. In addition, adding easy-to-track milestones and achievable point values would likely ensure that employees followed through with their wellness goals.

The Solution

Wired Solutions responded to the challenge by developing a secure, user-friendly web-based application designed specifically to promote healthy living through the use of interactive online contests and challenges for individual employees as well as teams.

Our fully customized Challenge Engine was built to provide Chrysler Canada administrators with the ability to quickly and easily create, assign, track and reward points for completed challenges among employee participants. Through an easy-to-use interface, administrators could effectively assign challenges, attaching start and end dates as well as adding detailed descriptions and pre and post challenge surveys. Point values could be added to each challenge, which were rewarded and recorded at key milestones set through the length of a challenge. All completed challenges, user metrics and point values are recorded within the Wellness Challange engine and stored in a secure database.

A Design engine was integrated to allow administrators to either choose from challenge templates or create their own unique look and feel through a customized design that allows for unique branding opportunities. While creating challenges, administrators maintain the ability to preview each challenge as participants will view them, making any adjustments prior to releasing the challenge to employees.

From the Milestone module, administrators gained the ability to create pre-defined events within each challenge, offer participants the ability to score additional points. Administrators can further specify which milestones are mandatory and which ones are optional. In addition, goals (which are based on biometric profile files) could be tied to specific milestones within a Wellness Challenge. For example, a Wellness Challenge may have users count their steps per day, with a goal such as “Walk 100,000 steps” added to measure the total inputs within specific milestones throughout the challege.

Through a Team Management module, we ensured that administrators maintained the ability to create teams within challenges. This module is configured to trigger additional functionality that allows challenge results to be tracked both individually for participants as well as collectively within teams. Administrators can also specify whether participants can pick their own teams or if teams are to be assigned.  A unique reporting interface was built into each challenge, allowing administrations to view and track top participants and winning individuals/teams.

A dedicated Profile Management system was developed to provide each registered user with a fully customizable user Profile. The private and secure Profile provided employees with the ability to maintain and update their current measurements and health biometrics, such as: height, weight, BMI and waist measures, while also adding their own healthy living goals. From the privacy of an employee’s Profile, personal goals such as weight loss objectives or lifestyle changes like eating lighter meals, could be recorded and tracked on an individual level. Goals, which are attached to biometrics such as weight measurements, weight and BMI, can also be created within a user’s profile. Participants can add as many goals as they like, as well as update, edit or remove existing goals. From a user’s Profile, visual comparisons, such as graphs, can be reviewed to provide overall ranks and point accumulation.

An intuitive Dashboard was designed to provide participants with the ability to view and register for challenges. As challenges are completed, points are gained and accumulated within the application database. In addition, Wired Solutions developed an internal Inbox Notification system within the Challenge Engine in order to allow team members to communicate with each other. This system provides an easy-to-use threaded message workflow that allows users to create, view and respond to messages created within the Challenge Engine. Users can determine whether or not they wish to receive notifications via email when new messages are sent. Group messages can also be used facilitate team-wide communication.

Full customization of the Challenge Engine was integrated throughout the application’s development in order to ensure that administrators would stay in control of the challenges and user progress. Additional custom modules allowed administrators to manage employee accounts, security allowances, and teams.

Supporting Technologies