Supporting workplace health and wellness can help you build a thriving organization. While workplace wellness initiatives require investments of time and patience, creating them can attract top talent and establish a positive reputation for your company. Indeed, you can demonstrate your commitment to workplace health and safety by establishing a robust well-being program. With that in mind, let’s explore the fundamentals of workplace wellness and how Givhero’s digital platform can support your efforts.
What is Workplace Health and Wellness?
The term workplace health and wellness encapsulates more than just the physical condition of employees. As per the CDC’s workplace health model, employers can help support their staff by nurturing their health and happiness. Therefore, workplace health and wellness refers to the protection and promotion of employees’ physical, mental, emotional, and social fitness.
What are the Benefits of a Workplace Wellness Program?
Work-based programs and policies can encourage positive health outcomes as well as prevent the spread of illness. They also illustrate your recognition of the time and energy that employees put into their professional roles. On the other hand, the organizational benefits of workplace health promotion are manifold.
Research has found a marked increase in employee engagement with company culture following the institution of such initiatives. Moreover, since they aim to support and improve individuals’ health, these programs and policies can usher in increased productivity. Happy and healthy employees, after all, perform better than anxious and debilitated ones.
Finally, positive workplace health reduces employee turnover, as workers tend to stick with organizations that prioritize their well-being. These effects constitute a significant ROI for your contributions to workplace health and safety.
What are Examples of Workplace Wellness Programs?
Popular workplace wellness program options include:
- Nutrition coaching
- Health screenings
- Weight loss programs
- Daily step/exercise programs
- Preventative health screenings
- Stress management coaching
- Hydration challenges
While many workplace wellness initiatives focus on physical health and wellness, well-being also includes mental, behavioral, and social aspects. We recommend incorporating mental wellness initiatives, such as digital wellness apps, employee assistance programs, and counseling services.
Additionally, you can boost the efficacy of your office’s wellness programs by incorporating socially responsible endeavors. These include donating to social causes, volunteering for charity drives, and supporting community events. Givhero’s digital platform offers social wellness functionality so employers can incorporate such activities.
What Companies Have the Best Employee Wellness Programs?
Given the ubiquity of workplace wellness, you may wonder which organizations have become adept in its practice. Industry experts cite Wiley, KPMG, ServiceNow, and Monster as leaders in enhancing employee well-being. All these companies cite a few factors as instrumental to their success.
First, they organize wellness efforts to support their vision of the workplace’s culture and community. They also find creative ways to meet employee expectations and deliver value. Finally, they recognize that workplace community and connectedness can arise out of employee engagement with the company’s culture.
How Do You Implement a Wellness Program in the Workplace?
Your organization differs from all others—including your partners and competitors—to some degree. Thus, implementing a wellness program will also work differently for your workplace than all others. Nevertheless, you should follow some foundational steps to establish your wellness program.
At Givhero, we recommend starting this process by surveying your staff with a health risk assessment or the like. Assessment tools allow you to learn the priorities and concerns of your employees so you can design a program for your office culture. You can also take survey results to management and present them as evidence of the need for a wellness program.
Next, you should establish a wellness committee. An internal and employee-run unit, a wellness committee gives staff a voice in your workplace health and safety. Once established, it can work with you and your organization’s management to create objectives for your office well-being plan: lowering healthcare costs, boosting productivity, avoiding injuries, and so on.
Following these steps, you and your team can create your program’s components and initiatives. You might refer to an outside source, such as the CDC’s Work@Health Program, for training or insights. Alternatively, you can investigate popular program options. Consider incentivizing engagement through social wellness initiatives (discussed above) or adopting corporate wellness software to help with implementation (discussed below).
What is Corporate Wellness?
Corporate wellness is another term used in the wellness sphere. It simply refers to wellness efforts in large companies, that is, work-based programs and policies aimed at improving employees’ health and happiness. Therefore, corporate wellness works similarly to workplace wellness in small organizations. The distinction lies in the program’s scale.
You may also hear the terms corporate wellness providers and corporate wellness programs—again, “corporate” is a descriptor for the domain these entities operate in.
What is Corporate Wellness Software?
The term corporate wellness software applies to digital apps and tools that support the adoption and practice of workplace wellness programs. As you might imagine, wellness programs can create a great administrative burden. Corporate wellness software helps alleviate it.
Givhero’s employee health platform, for instance, provides a home base for any size organization to run its wellness initiatives. It offers a range of useful features, such as functionality for management and individual employees to create customizable reports on the progress of wellness goals and challenges.
Moreover, users can create teams with others in their organization and work together on challenges. They can also personalize their account and use their smartphone or wearable technology to track their progress. And our platform’s social wellness functionality provides intrinsic motivators—including Causes, Challenges, and Cooperation—to engage your staff.
Provide Workplace Health and Wellness for a Happier and More Productive Team!
Prioritizing workplace health and wellness entails understanding the topic’s details and bringing your entire team into its practice. Yet establishing effective workplace wellness programs delivers unrivaled value to your organization and support for your employees. Turn to Givhero for support and guidance in these efforts. Our digital wellness app can help you pull off successful initiatives and create a culture of well-being and productivity. Call us today at (240) 801-5927 or schedule a call with one of our representatives now!
