While turnover remains high and employee burnout continues, promoting employee wellness at your company is more important than ever. As a result, employers are quickly instituting corporate wellness and well-being programs to ensure these efforts remain a priority. These systems exist to help your workforce perform at their highest potential, which is a necessity as businesses continue to navigate uncertainty across industries.
While employee wellness remains top of mind, here are four ways to support your workers' well-being.
1) Keep your employees connected
It's easy to underestimate the importance of social collaboration at work, however, it can make a big difference in your workplace wellness. Those who are happier at work tend to have strong relationships with their colleagues. Finding ways to ensure your workforce can build valuable working relationships will be essential to their well-being, and this is even more critical as remote work options and hybrid models expand. These initiatives might include encouraging water cooler conversations or creating opportunities for co-workers to casually connect online.
2) Encourage a healthy work-life balance
One of the most common causes of stress, fatigue, burnout and absenteeism is an unhealthy work-life balance. This is detrimental to your overall productivity, and, as a result, your bottom line. Promoting a healthier balance might involve encouraging proper rest and time away from work while guaranteeing your employees are able to meet important deadlines. This can help workers take a step away from their tasks to come back fully energized and prepared to perform at their best.
3) Incentivize exercise
Exercise is a vital part of your well-being and incentivizing it at work can help your employees take the best care of themselves possible. You can create workout challenges that can be completed for rewards or consider implementing an exercise program to encourage colleagues to achieve their fitness goals together. This is not only beneficial for coworker bonding but will be highly valuable to your workplace wellness as well.
4) Promote stress management
An unhealthy amount of stress can quickly hinder your workforce from remaining engaged or performing at their fullest potential. Moreover, uncertainty can result in high-stress levels. It's critical for employers and managers to focus on stress management techniques to encourage wellness at work. The best practices to reduce stress include meditation, deep-breathing exercises, counseling and even something seemingly simple like improving communication. This will help your workers understand exactly what's expected of them while giving them exercises to keep their stress levels manageable.
Promoting employee wellness at work is beneficial for keeping your talent engaged and motivated, showing them you care about their well-being and improving your productivity as a result. According to the Gapin Institute, organizations with highly successful health and productivity initiatives generate 11% more revenue per employee, 28% higher shareholder returns and 1.8 fewer days absent per employee per year. Overall, keeping the well-being of your workforce at the forefront of your practice is a valuable way to drive better business outcomes.