With today’s working lifestyle taking a toll on one’s mental as well physical health, it becomes an organization’s responsibility to promote a healthy culture by introducing varied activities. Wellness programs, workshops conducted by mind coaches, and providing fitness facilities are some of the common ways to help employees maintain work-life balance.
Why is workplace wellness so important?
1) Better Health = Less Absenteeism
Organizations promoting wellbeing and healthy choices have a more employee turnout ratio than others. Since wellness programs help in giving more health benefits for the entire family, employees take less leaves to take care of unwell self and sick family members too. The cost of giving a healthcare benefits can be compensated against decreased overtime expenses to cover absent employees and other disadvantages of higher absenteeism.
2) Reduced Health Risks = Increased Productivity
It has been observed in factories as well as corporate settings that by offering workplace wellness programs, employees are more loyal to the organization. Presenteeism, in its true sense, means representatives are truly present physically and mentally, as a result of those health programs.
3) Low-Stress Levels = Improved Employee Morale
An organization that thinks about its representatives’ wellbeing is regularly observed as a supreme work environment. Organizations that value hard-working employees save a lot of money.
Ways in which Organizations can promote Employee Wellness?
1) Stress Management Workshops
The stressful environment is common in a professional workplace and can affect an employee’s morale. Stress management workshops can help the group in handling the circumstances patiently. Indeed, even a short meeting can have a positive impact on the representatives’ perspective. The field experts teach representatives’ various methods to lessen the work stress so as to improve the wellbeing and prosperity in office. The workshops could bring inspiration for the representatives and lift their confidence in their abilities. It likewise assists with improving concentration which further builds efficiency.
2) Inclusive Culture
Both “diversity” and “inclusivity” are important aspects of a successful organization. A company must have diversity — one that incorporates individuals belonging to different gender, societies, religions, ethnicities, and ability in order to convey a rich history and range of abilities. However, an organization is truly inclusive when it accepts beauty and power of differences to make better choices and arrangements. Inclusiveness doesn’t occur naturally but has to be attempted to make a comprehensive work environment. Many organizations are increasingly becoming more versatile, advance, and creative in order to promote inclusivity.
3) Social Support
There exists a strong connection between social wellbeing and work balance. Honest connect with leaders and teammates positively affects employees’ performance. Organizations that have adaptable work culture and social support programs help in making the environment more casual. Along these lines, social support at work can have good results both for representatives (e.g., work fulfillment, increased incentive) and the company (e.g., effectiveness, efficiency, and less absenteeism).
4) Fitness Activities
Giving a chance to associates to interact outside of a confined workplace cultivates solid individual and group connections. By providing them a gym (or a space to do exercises), organizations show them they wish for their employees to stay healthy and fit outside the workspace. Besides, working out with others can help make employees more responsible for their body.
5) Health Benefits
More joyful and increasingly secure employees are future leaders. Giving advantages to full-time employees shows that business puts their wellbeing and their lives ahead of everything else. To successfully regulate health benefits, organizations should give extensive advantages such as medical coverage, retirement plans, critical illness insurance, accidental expense reimbursement, and the likes.
6) Employee assistance programs
Wellbeing implies dealing with the body as well as the mind. A great deal of business-related pressure can be taken care of outside the work environment through guided help programs. Employee assistance programs such as financial assistance show how sympathetic and concerned an organization is for their employee. And in this manner, it boosts fulfillment and confidence between the business and the individual.
How is the hi-tech revolution promoting employee wellness programs?
It is time we embrace technology and let AI and data science to prepare tailor-made benefits for the diverse workforce. Here are some applications that are helping companies worldwide to make conscious changes at work:
1) MyFitnessPal
With this app, employees track their calorie intake and improve dietary habits. With over 5,000,000 options to choose from, they can know the exact breakdowns of carbs, fat and protein in their meals. In addition, the application creates a daily calorie goal depending on whether you need to maintain, increase or reduce your consumption. It’s the ideal calorie-tracker software for employees who need to keep a continuous check.
2) Elevate
Wellbeing doesn’t simply mean heading off to the gym and watching what you eat. While this satiates the physical self, the mental self needs some exercise too. Elevate is a “mind boosting application” offering over 35 exercises to help improve memory, pronunciation, concentration, concentration, and so on. This customized mind wellness application comes in the form of a game to help your brain burn some calories too.
3) Meditation Studio
Meditation Studio offers employees a collection of over 250 guided exercises taught by about 30 experts. The app lets employees schedule meditation sessions to stay on track, relieve tension, take a break from monotony, lower risks of depression, boost confidence and help in achieving longer periods of sound sleep — all of which can do wonders to an organization’s productivity levels.
Today, they are companies that specialize in their employee wellness programs and they are also successful in bringing together their entire workforce at their best. Hence, those organizations that show interest in their employees in every sphere of life also prove they value everyone’s time and efforts.
Workplace Wellness is very much important: