Health and work go hand in hand. When your employees are feeling good and are relatively healthy, they are less likely to have accidents, hurt themselves, and show up to work regularly. Promoting healthy habits is fairly simple with just a few modifications to the work area.
Lead Them To Water
Drinking water regularly keeps us well hydrated and detoxifies the body naturally. Unfortunately, many of us don’t get enough water. Office water dispensers in easy to access locations across the workplace are one way to promote drinking more water. If you have a break room, consider speaking with your vending service to stock more water than juices or sodas. Your employees may opt for the juice and soda but if there are less available, more people will purchase the water by default.
Make Your Furniture Health-Friendly
Avoiding injury should be a top priority for any business. You can first look at all of your office furniture to be sure that it’s not hurting your employees. When office chairs are too old, they can harm our backs and cause us to miss work. Back problems are one of the highest reasons for injury in the office space. You can also utilize standing computer desks as well. They have become a popular option for many as it keeps up upright and moving around a lot more. Sitting puts a lot of weight on our back and hips whereas the standing desk redistributes our weight better. Be sure you get a good mat for those desks to support the feet as well. If anyone is harmed in the workplace, address it immediately!
Encourage Small Workouts During Breaks
Creating scenarios that encourage movement during breaks are an excellent way to get your employees moving to healthier habits. A walking group that takes 15-30 min walks during lunch is one of the easiest plans to utilize. If your people don’t want to walk, teach them stretches they can do at their desk or workstation to keep their bodies limber and feeling fresh. One of the best incentives any business could do is offer discounted or free gym memberships for the nearest gym. You can also add in fun “competitions” to see who can lose the most weight or visit the gym in a month or quarter. All of these little steps means people who may not normally exercise will now join in. When a group does it, it provides helpful and healthy team building to strengthen your employees as a workforce.
Increase Natural Lighting
Natural lighting promotes healthy sleep patterns and improves their productivity. In any office or workspace that you can, open the windows and let that light pour in. If your space does not offer any sort of natural lighting, move break areas to outdoors so that your employees can get a dose on their break.
Set Work Boundaries
While we often applaud the employee who goes above and beyond their job, it’s also important to encourage a well-balanced life between home and work. Once an employee is done for the day, they are done. No emails, no phone calls, nothing happens until they come back the next day. If your employees are consistently working overtime, it’s time to look at how productivity is going. You may very well need to hire an extra hand to help or restructure the workday so that productivity improves. When employees have a healthy boundary between work and their personal lives, they get sick less and often appreciate their job even more.
Healthy employees are happy employees. Do them a favor and show them you appreciate them by offering incentives and creating an environment that promotes their health. You should notice a big difference in performance and attendance.
Kidal Delonix is a contributor to Mr. Hoffman's blog. The views and opinions are entirely his/her own and may not reflect Mr Hoffman's views.
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