3 Ways to Boost Your Company's Wellness Initiatives

Employee wellness is at the forefront of most employers’ minds. 

It’s no surprise that companies are constantly searching for new ways to keep their employees happy when, on average, Americans spend one-third of their lives at work (around 90,000 hours)! 

Mental health struggles, including stress, anxiety, and depression, are at an all-time high. Almost all employees say that their workplace stress affects their mental health and 4 in 5 feel emotionally drained.   

Employee wellness refers to the overall health and happiness of your employees. It incorporates physical, mental, emotional, and financial well-being.  By ensuring your employees are happy in all aspects of their health, you can increase employee engagement and promote a strong and positive company culture. 

Providing an extensive employee wellness program can also reduce absenteeism. Healthy employees are less likely to need time-off work due to stress or burnout. Reduced productivity due to chronic health conditions costs US businesses a total of $84 billion every year. 

Showing that you genuinely care about the health and well-being of your employees and supporting your employees through a wellness program can increase their loyalty to the company and make them feel valued and cared for. In turn, they’re more likely to work harder, and stay motivated and committed to their roles. When you offer an impressive employee well-being program, you can recruit and retain talent more easily, and this can be particularly helpful for smaller businesses or start-ups who have yet to build a reputation for themselves. 

So, how can you create and implement an effective employee wellness program to keep your workers healthy and happy in the workplace? 

Personalize Your Program

Personalization is truly the future of business. Every employee deserves to feel special and valued, and this concept is no different for your health and wellness programs. Every person’s health needs and preferences are unique and this should be reflected in your employee wellness programs. 

Are your employees able to customize your wellness program offerings to make them meaningful and actionable?  For HR staff who are already tasked with completing priorities, operationalizing individual employee requests for wellness programming is not sustainable.  Finding a partner who can provide both the technology and the expertise to support each of your employees on their wellness journey will ensure that you and your employees have a solution that is personalized, scalable and sustainable.

Sprout At Work’s mobile-first platform empowers employees to set goals, join communities to connect with their peers and participate in company-wide and user created challenges.  Additionally, each user has access to Sprout At Work’s in-app health risk assessment. The Sprout Real-Time HRA™ is the first of it’s kind to provide science-based health risk assessments (HRA) using physical activity and wearable wellness data.  Employees receive a personalized wellbeing score that updates as new activities data is captured.  Organizations receive aggregate reporting for dynamic insights into employee population health.

Think Holistically

The first thing most people think of when it comes to health is physical wellness.  While this is important to consider when creating your employee wellness program, it is important to incorporate other aspects of wellbeing.  The most successful employee wellness programs are those that offer physical, mental, emotional, social, and financial support.  

It is also important to consider not just the above “wellness buckets” but also how employees participate in your wellness program.  Some employees will be driven by a little friendly competition, others will look to set personal goals and it is important to provide a wellness solution that considers individual interest, comfort level and readiness for behaviour change.  Wellness programs are able to educate, engage and inspire employees when they have been purposely designed to provide the right tools at the right time.

Get Leaders Involved 

Employees want to see their management teams getting involved. Company culture includes every member of the team! Companies with senior leaders who participate in and enable wellbeing see 34% higher engagement in wellness programming.  What’s more, managers who get involved in wellness not only get healthier themselves but also have teams who are 15% healthier.

• Communications from leadership and management let employees know that their wellbeing is of the utmost importance.

• Provide positive role modelling by asking team leaders to share examples of how they are staying healthy 
  
  
• Send reminders to your workforce to take their breaks, lunchtimes, and to make time for family.  Doing this will demonstrate that wellness is a core part of your company’s culture.

Ready to learn how Sprout At Work can move the wellness needle at your organization?  Book your discovery call today.