Employees play a crucial role in the long-term success of your business. They provide insights into the overall customer experience, build a positive image through customer interactions, and function as powerful marketing tools. Highly effective employees also help retain old customers.

To ensure that employees continually contribute to the business’s success, workplace wellness should be promoted at all times. Anxiety and stress are present in the workplace, and neglecting workplace wellness can mean unproductive employees and more business expenses.

Here’s how you can promote workplace wellness.

1. Offer Fitness Memberships

Regular exercise can provide tons of benefits for employees. Physical activities can help sharpen memory, improve concentration, and prolong mental stamina. Exercise can also enhance creativity and lower stress.

Zevo Health has physical workshops aiming to prevent and manage mental and physical illnesses. This will encourage them to exercise more often and pay attention to their diets. Depending on the size of your company and budget, you can offer spa, gym, or yoga memberships to employees.

2. Prioritize Office Ergonomics

Employees work for at least eight hours every day, which is why the condition of their workplace can affect their wellness. How can employees stay healthy if their workplace lacks sufficient chairs or tables? Do you think they can remain productive in this environment?

Another way to promote workplace wellness is to ensure that every employee has an ergonomically correct workstation. This usually means providing employees with a comfortable chair that supports their spine, a desk set at the proper height, an ergonomic keyboard, and a mouse that perfectly fits their hands.

Prioritizing office ergonomics can effectively decrease pain, increase blood flow, and strengthen muscles. All of these can result in employees having better mental insights and less anxiety.

3. Encourage Healthy Snacking

Poor diet adversely affects productivity. Studies show that eating unhealthily is linked to a 66% decrease or loss of productivity. Over time, productivity losses can cost employers thrice the amount of the average annual health care expenses.

Promote workplace well-being while reducing unwanted costs by serving healthy snacks to employees. Instead of adding vending machines with candies and sodas in the offices, choose a machine that serves water and granola bars. You can also communicate to the employees about the importance of healthy diets and encourage them to bring their meals to work.

4. Implement Stress Management Strategies

Stress is common in the workplace, but too much of it can negatively affect employees’ wellness. Stress leads to poor work performance, burnout, and even conflict in the workplace.

Ensure that stress doesn’t overwhelm employees by implementing stress management strategies. These strategies can include:

• Allowing employees to go home early
• Arranging retreats for the employees
• Having a meditation room in the office
• Holding stress management lunch regularly
• Providing stress management books and other similar materials for employees

5. Encourage Healthy Sleep

Aside from diet and exercise, do you know that the quality of sleep employees get also affects their productivity? Having poor sleep habits can increase absenteeism and job-related accidents. Lack of sleep also prevents employees from thinking clearly and reacting quickly.

Quality sleep is essential to maintain workplace wellness, so encourage healthy sleep among your employees. You can achieve this goal by asking employees to shut down work email after 6 PM and prohibiting them from working during the weekend.

6. Allow Collaboration

Being able to work independently is an impressive trait among employees. But because humans are social beings, employees must be given the opportunity to collaborate with others. Working alone all the time puts employees at risk of stress and burnout.

Another way to promote workplace wellness is to encourage collaboration among employees. You can make collaboration a priority by hosting meetings regularly and encouraging employees to meet in person. Granting flexibility in terms of group meeting locations and schedules will also make it easier for employees to collaborate.

7. Allow Pets in the Workplace

Seeing your pet wait for you as you return home from work is an excellent stress-reliever. Pets can lower stress hormones while increasing the levels of feel-good hormones in the body.

One fool-proof way to promote workplace wellness is to allow employees to bring their pets. A pet-friendly workplace lowers stress levels, improves morale, boosts happiness, and increases productivity. Having pets in the workplace can also encourage employee collaboration and interaction, as well as improve employees’ physical and mental health.

Think Long-Term 

It’ll be difficult for any business to succeed without productive, healthy, and happy employees, so make sure to prioritize workplace wellness. These initiatives will require resources from the company, but the results will surely be worth it!