In recent years, corporate wellness has exploded. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, many people are working from home. Although the traditional way of working has changed, workplace wellness is still essential in maintaining a productive and happy workforce. As a wellness business, your employees are usually the face of your company. They are the people that interact with members and help your customers on a daily basis.
To deliver great service to your customers, you need happy and healthy employees. A corporate wellness program is a fantastic place to start. By integrating wellness into your workplace as much as you do your services or product, you can elevate your team and grow your business. In this article, we discuss what is corporate wellness, the benefits of it, and 12 corporate wellness ideas and strategies you can implement into your business.
Skip ahead to:
- What is Corporate Wellness?
- 4 Benefits of Workplace Wellness
- 12 Corporate Wellness Ideas and Tips to Implement in Your Business
What is Corporate Wellness?
Corporate wellness programs are designed to support the health and well-being of a company. It’s the concept of taking a holistic approach to health and creating a wellness culture within a company. It could be promoting a healthy activity or encouraging healthy eating. As wellness has a lot of meanings, corporate wellness can take on different forms. But at its core, it means taking action to cultivate healthy habits among employees to increase productivity, health, and encourage movement.
When it comes to corporate wellness, you’re talking about elements that go beyond traditional healthcare. It’s not just about your healthcare offering, it’s about implementing strategies to improve health outcomes overall. You would offer wellness initiatives in addition to any health plan benefits you already have. The overall aim is to facilitate wellness so that you improve the working environment.
A holistic approach to wellness looks at the mind and body as a whole. Lifestyle changes in employee health can have a very positive effect on company culture. Your company culture is a big factor when it comes to attracting high-caliber talent. Therefore, corporate wellness solutions can have multiple effects throughout the business.
Now and going forward, wellness companies will need to show how they are supporting their employees’ mental and physical health. By improving the well-being of your team, the company can benefit as a whole.
4 Benefits of Workplace Wellness
Both the employees and the business can benefit from workplace wellness. As more and more employees expect companies to offer a wellness program, the best talent will search for businesses with great culture and a clear process for supporting their employees.
Improve Employee Health
Employee well-being is a major concern for organizations. When your employees have more resources to take care of their own health, it can improve their health. Regular exercise and healthy eating can result in fewer illnesses and chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes. As employees feel healthier and better, they are less likely to come to work sick or need a sick day. This helps to improve the working environment and make employees feel more comfortable at work.
Lower Medical Costs
Rising medical costs are a concern for both employers and employees. The COVID-19 pandemic has pinpointed how adults with underlying health conditions are at a higher risk of developing a serious case of coronavirus. Risk factors such as weight, age, and other underlying health conditions all appear to affect the outcome of COVID-19. Because of this, studies suggest that healthcare costs could be rising in 2021 by as much as 14%. By improving health and wellness, you can look to increase the health of your staff. In the long-term, this may help to lower medical costs for both employees and employers.
Decrease Employee Absenteeism
Absenteeism is a term used to describe any worker who is not present. Of course, there are valid reasons for not being at work like an emergency. But if you have a workforce who are stressed, ill, and not entirely present even when they are physically in the workplace, you have a problem. Employee wellness programs work to decrease absenteeism by focusing on the reasons why an individual isn’t at work. By lowering stress levels, promoting positive behaviors, decreasing obesity, and supporting mental health, your corporate wellness initiative can increase attendance, productivity, and your bottom line.
Boost Productivity and Morale
Wellness programs don’t just benefit the employee. By taking a holistic approach to care, you can look to see how wellness can help your business as a whole. When cultivating long-term healthy habits, you can help create a happier and healthier workforce. While a wellness program isn’t a solution for a poorly managed business, it can promote a healthier lifestyle. The importance of regular exercise and eating healthily can’t be emphasized enough.
Another benefit of corporate wellness is that it can boost productivity in the workforce and increase morale. Morale is essential in keeping employees motivated to produce great work. It’s hard for employees to be engaged at work if their health is suffering. Whether you feel unwell socially, physically, or mentally, it can all impact your well-being and ability to pay attention.
12 Corporate Wellness Ideas and Tips to Implement in Your Business
Roughly 87% of employees said they would consider health and wellness opportunities when it comes to employment. Interestingly, 70% of employees enrolled in a wellness initiative show higher job satisfaction than those who don’t. It’s more important than ever to invest in corporate wellness strategies to cultivate an effective, productive, and healthy workforce.
The Customer
Engagement Playbook
for Your Fitness
Business
Discover more 1. Know Your Target Audience
Think about your target audience the same way you would research your ideal target customer. You want to understand who your wellness program is for so that it can be as effective as possible. Consider what motivates your employees. If you start at the wrong point, you may find that your employees are simply not interested. Your wellness program can involve different elements that target various parts of well-being. But to create a program your employees will love, it needs to be designed for your target audience. Ideas for wellness activities and initiatives include:
- Free gym membership
- Yoga classes
- Onsite massage therapist
- Support to quit smoking
- Wellness coach
- Healthy food available at work
- Wellness clubs and weight loss support
- Health risk assessment
2. Inform and Educate
Sometimes the thing that stands in the way of true progression in health and wellness is information. When you don’t know how to shop healthily, cook from scratch or know what exercises to perform, it can feel hard to get started. Depending on your employees, they may be knowledgeable about an area of wellness but struggle in others. Create a program that informs and educates your team so that they can take the knowledge and apply it to all areas of their life and work. Why not create a Wellness Wednesday Zoom session where you can bring in an external speaker to talk about stress management, high blood pressure and cholesterol, or a healthy lifestyle. Start the wellness conversation and make sure that your topics are relevant to your audience.
3. Personalized and Confidential Advice
If you’re going to encourage open conversations with your workforce, it’s important to offer both personalized and confidential advice. Think about the way you help your customers, you create a personalized user experience and safe environment. Your wellness program should encourage employees to come forward with any specific problems. This may help you to improve your wellness initiatives. It’s essential that any confidential conversations and advice remain private. Otherwise, this could create a trust issue within your workforce.
4. Team-Building Events
The coronavirus pandemic has forced many events online, including team-building. But whether it’s a digital activity or your planning for the future, team-building events can do wonders for building relationships and boosting team morale. Create fun fitness challenges and races that your employees can join. You can do something as simple as a step challenge from home or create a whole-day event like a sports day, or team scavenger hunt.
5. Embrace Technology
Technology can streamline wellness initiatives and consolidate all your data into one place. Nowadays, there are a bunch of wellness providers that offer corporate wellness software to manage your initiatives. Wellness platforms like Virgin Pulse, Fitbit Health Solutions, Vitality, and LifeWorks help you create a personalized health solution to drive employee engagement. It’s also a good idea to encourage employees to leverage technology by subsidizing wearable technology like Fitbit or Apple Watch. Fitbit has a range of wellness challenges and competition that employees can join. This allows them to compete against one another while tracking steps and other health data.
6. Financial Wellness
During the COVID-19 crisis, financial wellness has gained a lot of attention. With a lot of financial uncertainty around employment, rent, mortgage payments, and more, some employees are relying heavily on emergency loans and financial help. 62% of employers feel extremely responsible for their employee’s financial wellness. Wellness is more than what you eat or how you move your body, it’s your finances, your relationships, and your mental health. Financial wellness incorporates your daily finances, savings, and the future. Employee financial wellness services help employees to manage their finances better. This could include money management courses, workshops, financial tools, and even financial support.
7. Make Health a Priority Every Day
Try to find ways to incorporate health into your employee’s day-to-day tasks. Health should be a priority every day and this message comes from the top and starts with you. Make your program simple, to begin with, so your employees don’t feel overwhelmed. Depending on your business, you may employ personal trainers, fitness instructors, retail staff, nutritionists, and marketing experts. With such a wide range of abilities and interests, try to find ways to make health a priority. Perhaps encourage your staff to set wellness reminders to go for a walk each day or take regular screen breaks.
8. Reward Healthy Eating
Promote and reward healthy eating habits. You can do this in a number of different ways. A healthy diet is an essential part of your overall health. But, it’s often challenging to address eating concerns in the workplace. Instead, try to actively reward healthy eating habits both in and out of the workplace. Create prizes, perks, and raffle entries to win big prizes. Motivate your workforce to eat healthy foods. You can even bring in a chef to offer some virtual cooking classes and healthy food shopping advice.
9. Workplace Wellness Newsletter
A company newsletter is a simple yet effective way to provide information and health promotion to your employees. Update your team about the latest news in fitness, nutrition, and educational content to inform them about important information. You can also use your newsletter as a way to highlight your wellness initiatives and showcase success stories within the company.
10. Create a Wellness Rewards Program
Creating a wellness rewards program will be crucial to the success of your initiatives. Finding ways to reward your employees will be a key motivator to keep going. After all, it’s difficult to keep putting in the hard work if you don’t see any reward. Make it as easy as possible to partake in your wellness program and achieve rewards. By incentivizing healthy behavior change, you can cultivate a healthy and productive workforce. Whether it’s a bike to work day, a cook-off, or a company step challenge, offer great incentives to get your team moving.
11. Evaluate Your Ergonomics
Ergonomics is the science behind designing your workspace so that it’s the most efficient way of working. Whether you have a team working from home, an office, or at a spa or gym, evaluate your ergonomics and worksite wellness. In an office, this means that the keyboard, chair, desk, and monitor are positioned correctly to avoid back pain and repetitive motion injuries. Give your workers the ability to sit, stand, and work ergonomically to avoid eye strain and other injuries that could result in missing work.
12. Survey Your Employees
No one knows your employees better than they do. Send out a survey to your team to find out what’s working and what isn’t. Your wellness program can evolve as your business grows. By creating wellness initiatives that are scalable, you can maintain flexibility as you become bigger and more successful. Use a simple tool such as SurveyMonkey to ask your employees how they are feeling and what would benefit them the most. You can then create a wellness program that will work as it’s designed for your target audience.
In Summary
Your employee’s well-being should be a major focus. By improving health and wellness, both the employer and employee benefits. A healthier workforce is more productive and takes fewer sick days. When you cultivate healthy habits, you’re working to build a positive work culture that will attract high-quality talent and increase retention. As corporate wellness continues to be a contributing factor to an employment decision, you will need to implement the right strategy to support your team. A happy workplace delivers excellent service that your customers not only demand but expect.
