Promoting Health In The Workplace: Benefits & Tips

A company or organization greatly impacts the health of its workers. The average American spends about 8 hours, or one-third of the day, working each day. So, how the company uses those hours and promotes health outside those hours greatly impacts a person’s well-being.

This is important to know because healthy workers are good workers. You are creating a better group of employees by promoting an environment and work culture that emphasizes health and well-being. So, by doing this, you help everyone involved.

Keep reading to discover exactly how promoting health in the workplace is helpful. Then, discover how to do it.

Benefits of Promoting Health In the Workplace

The CDC states that promoting health in the workplace improves productivity. This happens through a variety of different factors.

Decreased Health Risks

One direct benefit of promoting health in the workplace is a decrease in health risks. Health problems like heart disease, diabetes, and other illnesses are far less common in people with healthy lifestyles. By improving the health of your employees, these same employees will deal with fewer of these issues and, thus, will be less negatively impacted by them.

Lower Absenteeism

When employees are sick, they do not come to work. Or, they come to work anyway and get more people sick, thus leading to more people missing work in the future.

By promoting health, you can prevent this. Less absenteeism directly leads to more work being done and better efficiency overall.

Lower Cost of Healthcare

It sounds contradictory, but healthy people generally rely less on healthcare. Their healthy lifestyles prevent them from dealing with as many problems, and thus, they do not need as much healthcare.

Encouraging your employees to be healthy reduces healthcare costs for everyone. This impacts the amount your company needs to spend on health plans.

Improved Focus, Efficiency, and Productivity

Healthy people don’t just show up more often; they are also more effective when they do show up. Think about how difficult it is to work after spending a few days off with a cold. You aren’t nearly as effective as you would have been with a clear head. Your employees will be more focused, efficient, and productive when they are healthy.

Better Employee Retention

Retaining employees creates a group of well-trained workers in your company while reducing the amount you need to spend on recruitment and training.

In creating a healthy work environment, you will increase employee retention. Employees will be happier and more likely to stay with the employer that is making them happy. Plus, fewer employees will be forced to leave due to health issues.

Want to learn more about how Xcellent Life can help you promote health in your workplace? Send us a message now!

Tips to Promote Health at Work

People laughing while at a table with laptops

Now that it is clear that corporate wellness is important, let’s explore how to go about promoting health at work. Keep reading to discover a few helpful tips.

Watch the Number of Hours Worked

Stress has a massive impact on health. The American Psychological Association states that stress impacts the musculoskeletal, respiratory, cardiovascular, endocrine, gastrointestinal, nervous, and reproductive systems.

The amount of time spent at work influences employee stress levels. Working long hours for multiple days in a row will stress workers. Meanwhile, offering breaks and cutting hours will leave them less stressed.

Include Social Support

Another way to reduce stress is to receive support and help from others. However, only some have a strong social network.

You can encourage stronger social networks in your employees in several ways. This can be through fun workplace functions or the creation of social groups. These result in a better community health approach.

Offer Health Benefits

Health insurance has a pretty obvious benefit on health. People without insurance struggle to pay for medical bills and often forego treatment to avoid these bills.

Providing health benefits to your employees creates better patient engagement. This allows them to treat their health issues and receive the healthcare they need.

Include Fitness Initiatives

Health and fitness go hand in hand. By creating fitness initiatives, you can encourage a greater fitness level among your staff. These can range from offering healthy snacks at lunch to including light workout equipment in the office.

Offer Mindfulness Classes

Mindfulness allows people to be present in the moment and avoid being overwhelmed by stress.

You can encourage mindfulness by offering classes that teach it. You can host them in the office or provide the means for employees to attend classes on their own. Nowadays, you can even promote it through apps!

Understand and Encourage Healthy Behaviors

In many cases, the thing preventing someone from being healthy is that they don’t know how. Many people aren’t sure which behaviors are healthy and which ones are not.

You can change this by developing methods to inform employees. This can be as simple as emailing health tips or making them available in the office. Or, it can be more advanced and include a full health class.

Subsidize Gym Memberships

One of the best ways to be healthy is to exercise on a routine basis. This is easy to do if you have access to a gym. However, many people avoid gym memberships because of their cost.

If your company subsidizes gym memberships, you will increase the number of employees who use a gym. By doing so, you will encourage these same employees to exercise and be healthy.

Support Preventative Screenings and Vaccinations

A well-known adage says an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. When it comes to many health problems, this is true!

Providing employees with and encouraging them to take advantage of preventive healthcare helps. This includes preventative screenings at regular checkups and any recommended vaccinations.

How to Promote a Healthy Workplace

People in a group yoga class

Creating a healthy workplace often goes beyond making a few quick changes. You can make a better corporate wellness program by taking stock of your situation and fine-tuning it as necessary.

Survey Your Team’s Needs

Start by determining what your employees need. If your employees work at desks all day, their needs will be different from those who do manual labor.

Consider sending out a survey or asking employees for suggestions. This can help uncover any health issues you may not have known about.

Draft a Policy and Initiatives

Once you’ve gathered information, you can start crafting your approach. Create a policy that addresses the issues you noticed. In addition, highlight the specific initiatives you plan to include. Make sure the entire approach is straightforward and easy to understand.

Get Feedback

After your approach has been implemented, let it run for a little while. Then, start to collect feedback.

Send out a survey asking how people like the program. Make sure it asks what is working, what isn’t, and what they would like to change about it.

Adjust as Needed

Once you have enough feedback, you can make any adjustments you determine are necessary. If you received a lot of positive feedback, you might have fewer changes. However, if you received a lot of negative feedback, you may need to return to the drawing board.

Keep Your Employees Healthy

Promoting health in the workplace positively impacts employees and their employers. You can make this possible through a well-designed health plan and a few helpful initiatives. All you have to do is create an approach that works for your company!