Over the last few years, there has been a move towards improving mental health and personal wellness. The stigma of mental health is slowly dropping away, and there is a better understanding of the need for proper mental health management for everyone.
The goal of Corporate Wellness programs (also known as Workplace Wellness or Corporate Well-being) is to have a healthy and happy workforce. It is usually a collection of benefits given to employees to promote their physical and mental well-being. The best ones consider the lives of the employees outside of work and don’t just provide benefits while the employee is at work.
Problems With Unhappy Workers
An unhappy workforce can usually be traced back to a toxic company culture, certainly one that doesn’t consider employees people in their own right. Employees that are dissatisfied or unhappy in their work can lose your company money. They generally have lower productivity (and the work is lower quality than they can produce), creativity and innovation is low, even your business reputation can suffer. A high turnover is a good indication of unhappy workers and results in the expense of constant hiring and training processes.
Ways To Bring Wellness Into Your Company
Fortunately, there are many ways you can consider the well-being of your employees. A good starting point is to ask your employees anonymously for suggestions – then make sure you act on what they say!
Some initial ideas are:
- Organize social work events: Many workplaces have a big Christmas social, but perhaps you should try doing one in summer too. Companies like Alive Network have a range of ideas if you need inspiration – you could arrange a themed one on a Friday afternoon to start the weekend early, or even do one on the weekend and make sure there are bouncy castles and face painting for children. Just make sure it is not compulsory to attend, or that will suck any wellness out of it.
- Set up an office garden: Setting up a garden area for employees to use can bring many benefits. It is known that being outside (even for a brief time) can help lower stress, and it will encourage people to leave their desks for a proper break.
- Appropriate showers on site: If you’re doing other initiatives to encourage people to exercise more, then you should ensure you have well-designed showers on site. This will help employees go to the gym before work or during their lunch break or cycle instead of driving on their commute. Without showers, no one will be able to do this even if they wanted to.
- Additional benefits: Negotiate to get benefits for your employees, such as help with gym membership/healthcare, help with childcare, and discounts at large retailers. You should also ensure that salaries are competitive within the industry – avoid restrictive pay policies that will reduce competitiveness. Consider starting an employee assistance program (EAP) too.
Your employees are going to be the ones who will know what would contribute to their happiness and reduce their stress – talk to them and sincerely act on their suggestions. If management simply enforces their ideas down, wellness will not improve. You should ensure that there is complete anonymity for any feedback and investigate whether employees feel confident in going to HR about any problems they have – you may need to consider outsourcing this department to ensure impartiality.
