5 Employee Wellbeing Initiatives That Show You Care

Employee wellbeing refers to the physical, mental and emotional health of a company’s staff, as well as the healthiness of their working environment.

Employers can encourage healthier lifestyles and behaviour through corporate wellness and health programmes, which have a significant impact on employee health and wellbeing.  Benefits include:

• Reduced staff turnover
• Increased productivity
• Increased morale
• Reduced absenteeism
• Reduced stress
• Improved loyalty

Corporate health initiatives are a great way to look after employee wellbeing, show staff that you care and save businesses money in the long term.

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What are Employee Wellbeing initiatives?

5 Employee Wellbeing Initiatives

What are Employee Wellbeing initiatives?

Employee wellbeing initiatives are company strategies that focus on maintaining and improving the physical and mental health of their employees.

They are increasing around the world as employers realise that addressing employee health and wellbeing is linked to greater productivity and reduced absenteeism, and that company return and benefits on this strategic investment and overall health cost, are also increasing.

There are an estimated 38.8 million working days lost in the UK due to work-related illness and health and wellbeing initiatives can reduce this cost for employers. The amount of money that could potentially be saved through workplace health initiatives can be considerable.

Here are five corporate health initiatives that really work.

5 Employee Wellbeing Initiatives

1. Provide Healthy Snacks

A healthy mind in a healthy body is the goal and providing healthy snacks in the workplace can help support employees with their mental clarity, productivity and wellbeing and improve energy levels.

With an increasing number of people skipping lunch at work, more people are missing out on vital nutrients to help them keep up with their busy schedules, and unhealthy snacks can leave people feeling lethargic, bloated, tired and unmotivated.

Companies like Creative Nature help to provide a range of healthy allergen-free workplace snacks.

2. Health and Wellbeing Workshops

It’s great that employers encourage a healthy lifestyle for their employees, but it’s important that employees are also educated correctly about ways to be healthy.

Whether it’s providing workshops or webinars on subjects like Improving Your Physical Wellbeing or Coping with stress, educational training is a fantastic way to provide wellbeing initiatives for your employees.

Wellbeing webinars and workshops are a useful way of developing a successful employee wellness programme, delivering practical health information in a fun and participatory way.

3. On-site massage

Massage has been shown to have a range of health benefits including reducing stress, lowering blood pressure, improving mood, and reducing pain and discomfort.

Employee on-site massage is another employee wellbeing initiative that shows you care.  Allowing employees 15 minutes to step away from their desks to get a massage is a health initiative that always goes down well.

Massage in the workplace is performed on a portable massage chair in a quiet or private area giving employees a short period in which to relax, refresh and feel revitalised.

4. Provide Fitness Classes

Most of us are familiar with the benefits of exercise but not everyone has the time, money or motivation to join a gym or exercise alone.

Providing fitness classes or initiatives at work is a fabulous way to encourage positive employee wellbeing and could include things like yoga, boxing classes, dance sessions or circuits.

Having exercise classes at work is convenient and including them in a lunch break, or after work can help with employee time management.

5. Encourage Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance refers to the degree to which personal and professional activities are prioritised in an individual’s life, as well as the extent to which work-related activities are prevalent at home.

It should be encouraged all year round and not just as part of national work-life week.  It is an employee health initiative that is vital for getting the best out of your workforce and has been voted as one of the top factors when looking for a new job.

Work-life balance is a hot topic these days, thanks to advances in technology that have reduced the necessity of a physical working location. Taking work home used to be difficult or impossible, and there was a clear distinction between professional and personal life.

With many of us working from home either part-time or full-time it can be even easier to disrupt our work and personal life.

Having a company that focuses on this as a wellbeing initiative helps employees with a positive mental and physical wellbeing.

Author –

Tyler Lowe – Health & Wellbeing Speaker

BSc Sport & Exercise Rehabilitation