Your Business’ Roadmap to Workplace Wellness: A Comprehensive Guide

Broadly speaking, workplace wellness refers to the various activities and policies designed by businesses to support their employees’ overall well-being. This encapsulates both the physical and mental well-being of the employees. 

As explained by Harvard Business School, such wellness programs can help companies improve employee performance while yielding better business results. Wellness programs are also responsible for making the workplace more productive and helping employees develop themselves and their interpersonal skills.

A top-class workplace wellness program should have three key features. These include a supportive organizational culture, occupational health and safety, and employee wellness practices. As to how you can incorporate all these features and ensure proper workplace wellness, let’s find out. 

Assess Your Organization’s Needs

A corporate wellness program that doesn’t cater to its organization’s needs is, by no means, a good one. According to Deloitte, not listening to the sentiments and expectations of your workforce can lead to the formation of a low-quality wellness program. Such a program will not do any good to your employees. Thus, before all else, you must first assess your organization’s needs. 

Conduct surveys and engage with your employees directly to see what they need. Set up focus groups that can help you identify what’s missing at your office in terms of employee well-being. 

You can also analyze employee health data to see what types of health-related problems are more common at your office. You can also do the same with their mental health data, provided that your employees are okay with handing you this information.

Based on your conclusions from these data points, proceed with chalking out the wellness program. Sit with other office stakeholders and let them have their say as well. 

According to CNBC, many employees feel that there’s a disconnect between them and their employers. This disconnect is what, according to them, is fueling their employers’ ignorance of their well-being. However, this shouldn’t be the case, and to ensure that, identifying the needs of your employees is the first step. 

Implement Well-Being Policies

Workplace policies help employees understand what’s right and what’s not right at the office. As they get to make these differences, they’ll be better equipped to understand what’s good for their overall well-being. 

For instance, you should have strict policies regarding drug and alcohol use. Policies should also be drafted to ensure that no one is intoxicated while at work. To implement all this, you can seek the help of employment screening services. 

According to Health Street, workforce screening processes, like drug testing and background check services, help maintain company morale. Such employment screening is also beneficial for employees as it helps them deal with bad habits like addiction. 

When you have such policies in play, you’re no longer making workplace wellness an option for your employees. You’re making sure that it’s an established norm at the office. 

Look After Their Physical Health

Physical fitness is often ignored in the workplace. However, most modern offices are trying to change this practice. If you want to do the same, you can try implementing the following strategies:

• Daily quick exercise or yoga sessions that last 15-20 minutes
• Providing standing desks for those who ask for them
• Providing healthy lunch and snacking options
• Hourly reminders to drink water and stay hydrated 

Apart from all this, ensuring proper health insurance and on-site healthcare facilities is also important. For this, knowing about your employees’ pre-existing conditions is crucial. 

Prioritize Employee Mental Health As Well

Stress and anxiety are common among working people. At the same time, there’s always a chance that many of your employees might have existing mental health problems. Therefore, it only makes sense that your wellness program has a comprehensive action plan to cater to employees’ mental health needs as well. 

Before trying to solve mental health-related problems, make sure your office isn’t causing them in the first place. That means you should make sure employees have a proper work-life balance. Don’t stress them out too much or exhaust them. Also, keep a close eye on burnout as these too can lead to mental health-related problems. 

Workplace counseling is missing in a lot of offices; make sure it’s not absent from yours. You don’t need a counselor at work every day. However, have them visit at least twice a week so that employees can schedule appointments and seek therapy. 

Conclusion

Crafting a wellness program for employees is easier said than done. As you can tell from our discussion so far, there’s a lot that goes into this process. Although hectic, doing all this is necessary for the sake of your employees. After all, only when you cater to their well-being can they deliver their best for your business.