Did you know!? Healthier employees can improve your overall bottom line?

From a business prospective, you might be inclined to think more about your employees’ efficiency rather than their health, but turns out these two go hand in hand!

Healthy employees take fewer sick days and are more productive at work. They also have fewer long-term healthcare costs and fewer, less severe work-related injuries. No doubt your focus is on managing your business, but are you doing enough to ensure a healthy workforce? Even if you do not have the resources to implement a complete wellness program, there are several things you can do to show your employees you value their health and encourage them to live a healthy lifestyle.

Here are seven ways to promote employee wellness in your workplace:

1. Emphasize Education – Lunch or break time seminars are excellent opportunities to help employees learn more about healthy habits. Recruit speakers to lead sessions on cooking healthy, staying healthy during cold and flu season, stress management skills, etc. Keep sessions entertaining but informative and you may offer an incentive for those who attend to increase attendance.
2. Encourage Excursions – Turn your office into an active campus! If you can, make changes to your office space. Consider offering a secure bike parking place for commuters or turning an empty office into a lunch time gym. If you can’t make structural changes you may try implementing a lunch time walking club. Or you may provide discounts or subsidy for employee memberships at a local gym. Encourage the entire office to participate!
3. Hone Hunger – Everyone knows when you’re hard at work it can be easy or necessary to grab a quick bite from what’s at hand. Offer your employees healthy meal and snack options that fuel their performance while also meeting their nutritional needs. You may think about replacing soda with sparkling water, milk or juice, and stocking snack machines with nuts, dried fruit, and other healthy snack options.
4. Promote Preventative Care – Encouraging or even funding vaccinations for employees has one of the clearest returns on your investment of a healthy workforce.  When employees avoid the flu, they avoid missing work. Consider offering on-site flu vaccinations!
5. Invest in Incentives – Employee incentive programs offer rewards- monetary or otherwise, for employees who engage in healthy behavior.  A growing trend is to cover an additional percentage of the cost of health insurance premiums for employees who pass certain biometric markers such as having a healthy body mass index, blood pressure, and/or blood sugar reading.
6. Be Mindful of Mental Health – Unmanaged stress has been linked to many things including heart disease, high blood pressure, and sleep deprivation. On the job it can lead to inefficiency, job dissatisfaction, and absence from work for related health conditions.
7. Recommend Behavioral Resources – For some employees, a few work-based activities may not be enough to make a lasting change in their overall wellness.  In these cases, coaching and disease management programs may be worth a shot.  These programs are designed to pair employees with online, phone-based or face-to-face health professionals who can guide them through the steps of behavior change.  You may also consider offering weight loss, stress management or tobacco use programs to help empower your employees to make lasting and noticeable lifestyle changes.

If any of these ideas appeal to you, it may be time to take a step in the wellness direction! Try focusing on just one to start and if successful, try another! Remember that even taking a small step in the wellness direction can greatly benefit your employees, your productivity and overall bottom line!

Any questions?  Please feel free to contact the author at [email protected] .