Corporate wellness programs are a great way to keep your employees healthy, happy and productive. To achieve all these benefits, you need to keep your ideas exciting and healthy at
the same time. Here’s a list of 13 strategies you can use to achieve that goal:
1. Provide healthy snacks
Healthy snacks are a good way to help in weight control as well as mood improvement. Some people are happiest and more productive when they eat something; just don’t be cheap as offering low quality snacks would betray the purpose of the program and possibly even make your employees feel disrespected.
2. Publish an internal health and fitness newsletter
You could publish an internal newsletter solely dedicated to health and fitness related topics, in order to provide some motivation in an interesting and engaging way. To make this idea work even better, you could make every staff participate in the production process.
3. Create standing desks
Sitting down for long hours can be pretty tough on the back; besides, spending all that time sitting is very bad for health and it would help a bit if people could get up and walk around a bit. Although it might not exactly be very practical for employees to walk around unproductively during working hours, you could create standing desks to provide some physical stimulation while they work.
4. Buy lunch during project work
Offer to buy lunch for everyone during certain programs especially big projects. When your employees know that there is a reward for their hard work, they feel appreciated and tend to put in more effort, and of course you get the opportunity to influence them to eat healthy.
5. Encourage no smoking
Smoking is one of bad habit that not only poses grave danger to health, but is also estimated to cost employers in the U.S alone, upwards of $23 million each year.
6. Out of office
Provide a room either outside or in an open space where employees can meet, and have some fresh air while discussing work.
7. Flexible work hours
Allow employees time to be able to do other things outside the office. Keep in mind they have other responsibilities and an imbalance between personal life and work would only have negative impact.
8. Walk or bike path
If you have the space, you could create a walking or bike path, to provide some facilities to encourage staff to work out. You can provide bikes too so that employees may choose to take a break by riding around.
9. Yoga
Hire a specialist to come to the office weekly and conduct yoga exercises with everyone. It will be a good way to de-stress.
10. Posters on the elevator
You may hang posters on the elevator reminding people to take the stairs instead.
11. Fitness challenges
This may include the “7 hours” sleep challenge in which employees are given a month to track who gets at least 7 hours of sleep daily. At the end of the month, the winner receives a prize. There is also the 8 glasses of water challenge which encourages employees to drink more water.
12. Encourage naps
Naps are a great way to relax and allow the brain to reboot while storing data.
13. Organize field activities
This could be a monthly activity which allows workers bond while working on their fitness. It may include gardening or sporting activities.
Although some of these activities seem to come along with some substantial costs, you should keep in mind that the results could be so much more rewarding.