As the job market and business industry make huge changes due to the global pandemic, more businesses than ever are looking toward employee wellness programs to decrease absenteeism, increase productivity, and make their companies more desirable to work for. If you’re a business owner looking to understand the ins and outs of employee wellness programs and how they could benefit your business, read on.
Proven Wellness Program Models
Just like no two businesses are exactly the same, no two employee wellness programs are either. The reality is that companies offer health plans and wellness programs of all sizes. If you’re a business leader concerned about employee health and are hoping to improve the employee experience at your company, one great way to do it is to come up with a wellness program or challenge.
A great place to start is through websites, apps, and blogs on encouraging employees to live their best and healthiest lives. Wellable, for example, is an employee wellness program that directly integrates with the leading consumer wellness apps and wearable devices. Through the Wellable app, employees will have a better overall experience working for your company and engaging with other employees. Research shows that companies with wellness programs or who use incentive challenges through wellness apps have happier employees and stronger teams.
Types of Employee Wellness Programs
Some companies focus their wellness programming on seminars and trainings for healthier living, while others incorporate daily challenges into corporate culture. The truth is that there are no wrong answers and many companies find that asking employees about their health needs is a great way to build a wellness plan for employees.
Perhaps your company struggles with employees missing work often and morale is low. In your situation, creating a program that encourages bonding between employees and laughter would be the way to go. You could bring in a local chef to offer a healthy cooking class and Friday lunches if that was an employee interest. You could reward employees with gift cards to the local food co-op when absences were lowest. The ideas for special activities are really limitless and should be molded around your business’s specific needs.
For companies where employees are working remotely, online seminars and classes might be possible. Group retreats could be a way to go as well. When thinking about how to build your program, consider ways to tie productivity into incentives. That is, you could offer bonuses or gift cards to employees who win daily challenges.
Creating Healthy Habits for Employees and Employers
Employee wellness plans are not only helping employees stay focused, lose weight, and be more productive. These programs are helping businesses get healthier, too. After an unconventional year, these programs are forcing employers to look at how they’ve built their workplaces. With workers considering hybrid work models and more concerned than ever about health, they’re expecting more of the companies they work for.
Employers and employees are partners. By setting high expectations for one another, both are slowly becoming healthier, which is leading to positive change. These trends will continue on into the future, and the expectation of wellness plans within businesses may become the norm for corporate culture. If you’re a business leader, it’s a good idea to start planning for this trend soon.
In the end, an employee’s personal health is their own responsibility. However, businesses that are encouraging healthy habits and offering wellness challenges, special activities, fitness incentives, and seminars on better health are experiencing happier and more productive employees. As the business industry continues to evolve post-Covid-19, more companies will begin implementing their own versions of wellness programs and may find ways to use this to rise above the competition. Learning all you can about employee wellness now will likely put you in a better position to succeed going forward
