Companies with healthier leadership and employees tend to work more cohesively together. The office is lively and co-workers mingle well together. Employees with healthy lifestyles are typically more upbeat and focused on their work, which increases efficiency and productivity. Supporting healthy living can help drive staff with unhealthy practices to make some changes to improve their health and job performance.
Fewer Missed Days of Work
Healthy employees have fewer sick days, in most cases. This means that your company will experience fewer days of being short-staffed each year. The ability to schedule coverage for requested time off keeps the business running smoothly. It also helps reduce stress which may require an occasional personal day just to decompress and refocus. An intact and healthy workforce is more reliable and better for client communications as well.
Less Office Drama
A company with healthier staff is stronger because supervisory staff and ownership displays care and compassion for its workforce. This improves overall staff morale and leaves a business owner with much less office-related drama. Less arguing leads to more productivity and decreases workplace stress. As morale improves, so do the working relationships between multiple departments. The cohesiveness can lead to compelling marketing campaign ideas or innovative ways to improve quality to existing products with little cost.
Implement Technology
Corporate health programs are becoming more popular. As society becomes more reliant on technology and mobile technology, corporations are incorporating smart technology into those programs to promote healthy workforces. Much of society is using a fitness application or device to improve their health. Companies cannot contract with each maker of these devices/apps or force employees to use one specific application. A program like Jiff allows employers to gain access to employee devices, with consent, simply to collect fitness and health data.
The company can use this information to implement changes such as 10-minute workout breaks, standing desks and encouraging face-to-face contact rather than calling from one station to the next. The short breaks should be scheduled for mid-morning and mid-afternoon to help boost energy, regain focus, and deplete stress all at the same time. The data from the workout breaks could be used against analytical statistics regarding increased productivity following the breaks.
Promote Tension Breaks
Everyone gets stressed at work from time-to-time. Rather than allowing the stress to build, instill a method within your staff to stretch the pain away. Give each employee a list of stress management tips and include the completion of calf raises and desk push-ups as two of them. Promoting exercise as a means of stress relief is also promoting a healthy lifestyle.
Workforces with in-house methods and means of stress-relief often have lower employee turnover rates. The ability to relieve stress at the onset keeps employees happy with their employment situations. As a workforce is together for a longer period of time, it works like a dynamic well-oiled machine.
Consider Promoting Health and Fitness
Offering ways for your employees to maintain a healthy lifestyle while at work is more likely to be effective than simply making suggestions to them individually. Consider installing a gym or workout space within the building. If employees feel a little bit stressed or want to work out before/after work, it is available right there.
Also consider an office café with Mediterranean options. A Mediterranean diet is full of brain foods that help employees focus on work, have energy, and creativity. Offering healthy eating options right at the office is convenient and reduces lunchtime stress with having to rush through traffic and find a meal in a short amount of time.
Customized Motivation
There is a way to customize motivating employees, and it is through wearable technology. Wearable technology is items like fitness monitors and smartwatches. Companies can develop apps that employees can download to personal devices to release specified bits of data regarding the fitness and health practices of its employees. Roughly 13-million wearable devices are already planned for corporate wellness plans throughout the course of five years. Employees could have fun with the wearables making a department competition for the most progress in fitness each week.
Final Word
Healthier companies are stronger in creativity, longevity and employee morale, just to name a few key points. Creativity increases when employees are happy with their jobs and live a healthy lifestyle. As an entire workforce steers toward company-inspired healthy living practices, it becomes part of the company’s culture. If you make healthy lifestyle options, stress-relief options and exercise space available, your employees are likely to follow suit on their own without a gentle reminder that healthy is happy.
