A Guide to Wellness in the Workplace

While it is the norm for most employers to offer healthcare benefits these days, we’re starting to notice that this alone is not always sufficient. In addition to employee medical coverage, many companies now invest in their employees’ overall wellness. In fact, we’re seeing many candidates that specifically seek out these kinds of benefits during their job search.

What exactly does this mean?

For many businesses, this requires building a wellness program from the ground up. In order to do that, you first need to understand what wellness in the workplace entails.

Defining “Wellness”

While wellness does include physical health, it also refers to other areas like mental health and emotional well-being. Managing stress, interpersonal dynamics, and life outside of work are all important elements of wellness. A holistic approach that incorporates stress management, navigating interpersonal dynamics at the office and work-life balance strategies are key for success.

Why Wellness is Important

Any manager will tell you that a healthy, happy employee is more productive in the workplace. Factors like stress and emotional health can easily bleed into physical health and employee motivation, which is far from ideal.

Addressing these kinds of issues can prevent workplace accidents, employee apathy, and absenteeism. It can also lead to a reduction in healthcare costs. Additionally, a wellness program can boost employee satisfaction and improve corporate culture. All of this will help you to retain employees.

Aside from the potential cost savings and lower turnover, providing resources that better the lives of employees is simply the right thing to do. Healthcare is important, but is a reactive tactic. Preventative care accounts for a very small percentage of any given healthcare plan, so, helping your employees to bridge that gap and keep them healthy is best for all parties involved.

Types of Wellness Programs

Workplace wellness programs can take many forms. On the physical side, you can encourage proper eating habits by stocking the office with fruits, veggies, and other healthy snacks, as well as organizing team lunches at establishments with clean eating options. You can put together a team 5k and attend group fitness classes, like spin, yoga, and bootcamps.

Introduce walking meetings to your company culture, and offer options for bicycle storage to encourage employees to move before, during, and after the workday. Some wellness programs also include things like acupuncture and massages. Be sure to talk to your workforce about the kinds of things they’d like included in this kind of program.

Mental health is of the utmost importance. Make sure that therapy and other mental health treatments are included in your healthcare plans. Additionally, help to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health by talking about it in general and accepting mental health days as sick days.

Supplying resources to help your employees quit smoking or address other substance use disorders can be very impactful. This is often a very difficult task, so encouragement and aid from an employer can really make a difference.

Have regular check-ins with your employees to ensure that they are motivated. If not, work to find a solution to this challenge if possible. Talking about those intangibles can help you to keep employees engaged and satisfied.

If you’d like to learn more about how programs like these help you to attract talent while also retaining the top performers you already have, please reach out to the expert consultants at Michael Page today.