How Can I Help Improve the Health of My Employees?

Meeting tight deadlines and dealing with disgruntled co-workers is stressful. In fact, it's so stressful that it can take a toll on your employees' emotional and even physical well-being.

As an employer, there are things you can do to boost your employees' health. From creating a less-toxic work environment to implementing mandatory breaks, below are a few ideas to boost your employees' wellness.

Wellness Incentives

When employees aren't feeling their best, it leads to lower levels of productivity, increased absenteeism, and more employee turnover. Implementing wellness programs is one of the best ways to counteract negative factors within the workplace.

Since wellness comes in all shapes and sizes, you need to tailor wellness programs to suit the needs of your staff. Start by asking what matters most. Some employees may want a gym membership, while others will want to participate in group fitness.

Wellness incentives should be structured around your employees’ wants and needs. If ongoing gym memberships aren’t financially possible, try launching a month-long fitness challenge to get employees moving. Your goal needs to be employee engagement, which hopefully transforms into long-term lifestyle changes. Gift cards, discounts, and cash incentives are great ways to meet fitness benchmarks.

Challenge Your Employees

It's known that employers benefit from employee wellness, so it's important to challenge your employees both physically and mentally. In addition to providing wellness incentives, find ways to boost brain power. This is even more important when your staff members are in front of a computer for the majority of the day.

Encourage employees to boost their creativity in the office. This can range from office puzzle challenges to word searches. The key is to have your employees know it's okay to take a minute and breathe while at work. Also, tracking their response to these mini breaks goes a long way toward improving the company culture.

Interactive Breakroom

Since most office jobs involve sitting for the majority of the day, create a space where employees can stretch their legs and blow off some steam. Do away with the traditional coffee and donuts and make your breakroom a hip place to hang out.

Healthy juices, low-fat snacks, and even gaming systems can create a more relaxed yet healthy environment. If appropriate, you can even design a space where employees can nap during their breaks.

Improving the health of your employees should be educational and entertaining and yield positive results. The key is creating an environment that motivates your employees both inside and outside of the office.

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