From encouraging a practice of mindfulness to incorporating regular movement, here are 11 answers to the question, “What are some best practices you used to shape health and wellness at your workplace?”
- Implement and Encourage Mindfulness Practices
- Provide Health Screenings
- Learn the Concerns
- Friendly Competition
- Consider Giving Employees Flexibility
- Provide Healthy Food Options
- An Idea Not to Miss
- Create a Wellness Committee
- Make It Easily Accessible
- Create a Culture Around Health
- There is No Perfect Posture! Move Regularly
Implement and Encourage Mindfulness Practices
There are many benefits of mindfulness meditation for both individuals and organizations. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to help people manage stress, improve focus and concentration, and promote overall well-being.
In the workplace, mindfulness meditation can help to improve job satisfaction and performance while reducing absenteeism and turnover. Additionally, mindfulness meditation can help to build team cohesion and communication. Encouraging employees to take part in mindfulness meditation can positively affect your workplace’s overall health and wellness.
Michael Sena, Founder & CEO, Senacea
Provide Health Screenings
One best practice to shape health and wellness at the workplace is to provide a wellness program that includes health screenings, health education, and opportunities for physical activity.
The reason health screenings are so important is that they identify potential health risks and provide employees with information about how to reduce their risk of developing chronic diseases.
Health education is also important because it can help employees learn about healthy eating habits, how to manage stress, and how to stay physically active.
Melissa Kelly, CEO, Virtual Team Building
Learn the Concerns
Wellness isn’t the same for everyone. To promote health and wellness in your workplace and beyond, try talking to your team.
You’re likely to find that not everyone views each aspect of wellness with the same level of priority. For some people, physical health may outshine mental or emotional health. For others, you may find that it is the exact reverse.
Understanding the health concerns of your staff can help your company better align health and wellness initiatives that match the feelings of those who will participate in them. It’s much easier to get people on board with a culture of wellness when it matches their own personal sentiments.
Make time to talk about wellness with your staff and be open to all their thoughts and opinions. What you learn can be the difference between a successful push for health and wellness and an effort that falls flat.
Max Schwartzapfel, CMO, Schwartzapfel Lawyers
Exercise Friendly Competition
Friendly competition is always a fun idea for better health and wellness at work.
“The Office” fans remember the weight-loss episodes where the entire company competes for a prize for the most weight lost. Implementing a similar concept for one’s own office can be an excellent motivator to start practicing healthier habits alongside a wellness program.
Find a fun prize, set the parameters, and remember to always be encouraging throughout the process.
Kevin Callahan, Co-Founder & CEO, Flatline Van Co.
Consider Giving Employees Flexibility
A modern workday is a juggling act that requires an employee to wear many hats. The excessive workload employees bear throughout the day often leads them to health problems and even burnout territory later in their careers because they’re never able to fully recover.
I gave my staff flexible working schedules as an employer. This was a big step towards shaping proper health and wellness at the office. This way they can take time off for anything, including gym trips or meditation sessions outside of working days!
It’s been great since then—happier employees feel more satisfied with their jobs because it allows them to maintain a healthy lifestyle while being productive at work. The workspace has become a more relaxed and healthy place to work in!
Maria Harutyunyan, Co-Founder, Loopex Digital
Provide Healthy Food Options
Provide healthy food options in the breakroom. Food is an important factor in health and productivity. One way to ensure employees are getting nutritious food is to provide healthy food and drinks.
For example, offer various fruits, nuts, and oatmeal instead of processed snacks like chips and cookies. A diverse selection of whole food plant-based options will promote healthy habits.
Employees are more likely to work better and more efficiently when they are in a good mental and physical state.
Michaela Ramirez, MD, Founder, O My Gulay
Promote Standing Meetings
Encourage standing meetings because sitting all day is terrible for your health. If possible, encourage your team to hold standing meetings instead of sitting down for long periods of time. You can also hold walking meetings if you need to discuss something while on the go.
If you want to make a difference in your team’s health, give them standing desks as gifts. Standing desks have been shown to reduce back pain, improve posture, and increase productivity.
Lukasz Zelezny, SEO Consultant, SEO Consultant London
Create a Wellness Committee
In an organization, it is significant to bring employees who are passionate about wellness and are ready to do the work together and encourage others on their journeys.
We can successfully achieve this by reaching out to a group of workers who would be dedicated to bringing wellness to the organization and helping them form a committee for wellness support.
They should be allowed to develop beneficial and feasible programs, be champions of change, and to even have fun. The committee could figure things out by offering surveys on what fits the employees’ wants and what they really need with wellness.
Yongming Song, CEO, Live Poll for Slides
Make It Easily Accessible
Cultivating a culture that has high utilization of health and wellness benefits requires easy access to the information.
There are many ways to ensure that your health and wellness information and resources are easily accessible to employees. For example, some organizations designate a specific section in their intranet for health and wellness initiatives, while others have developed apps and partnerships with health and wellness companies.
There are many ways HR teams can share this information with employees. Whichever method you decide should take the culture of your workforce and currently available tools into consideration. It’s very important that employees and employers alike take advantage of health and wellness resources available to them.
The success of your health and wellness initiatives requires that employees know where to find the information 24/7. Making this information easily accessible is a best practice for ensuring the benefit is successfully used.
Brittney Simpson, HR Operations Manager, Walker Miller Energy Services
Create a Culture Around Health
Creating a culture around health is the best way to shape the workplace.
Employers should offer discounted gym memberships to employees, or build a gym on a different floor in the office. They should send monthly emails that share food recipes or meditation practices.
When health and wellness come from the top, employees will incorporate them into their daily lives.
Randee Machina, Director of Marketing, Simpli Pleasures
Move Regularly, There Is No Perfect Posture
Do you ever catch yourself at work holding yourself in what you would consider a “bad” posture? Do you realize you’re slouching and sitting bolt upright trying to maintain a “perfect” posture?
We’ll let you in on a little secret—there is no such thing as “perfect” posture. Staying in any one position is going to cause you problems. That’s why one of the best practices you can incorporate into your day is regular movement. You might think that sounds obvious and sure in a perfect world you’d be able to incorporate a workout into your working day.
Rather than worrying about finding half an hour to go for a walk or an hour to hit the gym, think about getting in 5 or 10 minutes of activity throughout the day. A ten-minute walk after you eat can help boost your metabolism and add 1,000 steps to your daily total. If you need to make a call, do it on the move rather than staying at your desk.
Incorporating “movement snacks” into your day can be a great way to boost your daily activity.
Brett Durney, CEO, Fitness Lab