Business
5 Ways To Promote A Healthier Workplace
“Health is wealth.” There’s so much truth to this thought. A workplace composed of consistently sick employees results in a high rate of absenteeism, which in turn affects your business operations. Productivity is significantly and adversely affected when the flow of work is hampered. In the long run, this negative situation also hurts profitability.
Therefore, it’s safe to say that the key to sustaining a high-performing organization is a healthy workplace. It’s normal to have sick employees occasionally, but when this happens more often, it may hamper the growth of your organization. With that, it’s worthwhile for businesses to foster a healthy workplace.
Here are five best practices you can adapt.
- Offer Vaccinations To Your Employees
Despite all the issues, doubts, and controversy surrounding vaccinations, it’s safe to say that many are still choosing to be vaccinated. Vaccines are considered routine, even for adults. An excellent example is the flu vaccine that is routinely administered among workers.
But despite the demand for vaccination, time is a constraint, especially for full-time employees. A credible way to promote a healthier workplace is to fulfill this need for employee vaccinations by partnering with on site vaccine providers. You don’t have to require everyone in the workplace to take the vaccine, but at least you can provide this option for those who want it. By having an on-site vaccination, employees don’t have to file for leave to go to a health center and get their vaccine.
For many years, vaccinations have been proven to be one of the best ways to control, stop or slow down the spread of diseases. At its best, should one get the flu, for example, the effects could be milder than those who didn’t have the flu vaccine.
- Pay Attention To Work-Life Balance
How overworked are your employees? Perhaps you don’t realize it yet, but if you aren’t careful, you could unknowingly be demanding too much time from your employees. There’s a reason why working hours exist, and it’s the owner’s and upper management’s responsibility to observe and respect those hours.
Doing overtime work shouldn’t be encouraged. Or, in the rare occasions when this has to be rendered, the frequency should be as minimal as possible. Otherwise, work can be unhealthy for employees, both physically and mentally. They’ve got a life outside of work and deserve to have that time to rest and relax for the next day.
Along this line, enforcing paid leave is also essential. Make sure employees have that time off to do whatever they want with those days. This keeps employees happy, well-rested, and happy, alleviating whatever stress they may have experienced during work days.
- Offer Health Insurance
If you haven’t offered health insurance to your employees yet, now is the best time to do it. Health insurance is a major proactive step to promoting a healthy workplace. By having their own health insurance, your employees don’t have to worry about expenses they’ll make when visiting a doctor. They know it’s necessary, but often, some choose not to see a doctor simply because they’re worried about the cost it entails.
Choose a health insurance provider that comes with a variety of inclusions for a reasonable price. These include free regular screenings, check-ups, and vaccinations. If you make these accessible for everyone in the company, the health outcome of your employees improves.
- Offer Nutritious Lunches
If your business has a canteen for employees, switch what you offer to healthier alternatives. Sure, there should also be a few treats occasionally, but at least for daily lunches, be more intentional with the meals served. While the food may cost more for your employees, the investment in a healthy eating habit that improves employees’ health is worth it.
Those who don’t have a canteen yet can also think about starting one. This stops employees from that urge to have a fast-food takeaway for their lunches.
- Open Avenues For Physical Fitness
While not every office has the space and resources to fund an on-site gym, this doesn’t mean there isn’t any other opportunity to start a physical-health initiative. There are different ways, like:
- Starting a Biggest Loser type of challenge for some friendly competition
- Offering yoga and meditation classes
- Offering jogging clubs and fitness programs
Like vaccinations, joining those classes isn’t something you can require from your employees. But you can encourage them to join one now that it’s free in your workplace. If it’s the cost of a gym membership stopping an employee from attending one, now they finally have that opportunity in your workplace.
The Bottomline Improving the workplace environment doesn’t have to be an expensive and time-consuming pursuit. There are big things you can do, but there are also small but effective tricks that work. Take this as a holistic approach, where you tackle various contributory factors to make a healthy workplace possible: company culture, employee morale, physical health, and employee wellness and support. Whatever route you take, remember that a healthy workplace translates to so many benefits to your business, making it an effort you can’t put off until later.
Kenneth is a proud native of sydney, born and raised there. However, he pursued his education abroad and studied in Australia. Kenneth has worked as a journalist for almost a decade, making valuable contributions to prominent publications such as Yahoo News and The Verge. Currently, he serves as a journalist for The Hear Up, where he focuses on covering climate and science news. You can reach Kenneth at bloggerjohnsmith12@gmail.com.