November 17, 2017

How Companies Help Keep Their Employees Healthy.

Healthy EmployeesHealth is Wealth—you can take this both metaphorically and literally. Why do I say this? As a business owner, tell me what’s your biggest asset? If your answer was anything other than employees or workforce, then, quite frankly, you need to get your priorities straight. Your employees are your greatest assets, and revenue generators, but only if they are healthy and raring to go. So, how can you keep your employees healthy to ensure money keeps pouring in? Let’s find out!

Winter is effectively here, but most employers are yet to prepare for it. The biggest preparation for the cold season ahead that employers can make is taking measures that ensure the safety and wellness of employees during winter. But, ensuring the health and wellness of employees should not be limited to the winter months. Instead, this practice should be evident in the workplace throughout the year. So, what are the measures that companies can take during the winter months, as well as during the rest of the year to keep their employees healthy? Let’s explore!

Supporting Fitness

No one can argue with the fact that there is strong connection between physical activity and overall wellness. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), regular physical activity helps to control weight, minimize the risk of heart-related disease, minimize the risk of some cancers, improve mental health, lower the risk of type 2 diabetes, strengthen bones and muscles and improve the overall chance of living longer.

Considering the above, you must support and encourage your employees to engage in physical activity without actually forcing them to do so. The best way to support and encourage your employees to engage in physical activity is making it as easy as possible for them.

You can achieve this by having an onsite fitness room where employees can perform cardio, strength training, or any other exercise routine they want during lunch hours or after their shift is over. An easily accessible, free-of-charge gym, is too good an offer to let go. So, you can expect your employees to engage in at least some physical activity and this is good news for you. If you’re wondering how, then here’s the answer to your question.

Progressive Insurance, an insurance company headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio, has an onsite fitness center that is used by its many employees. In addition to exercise equipment, the fitness center offers personal training, boot camp, yoga classes, and a program that assists the cessation of smoking.

According to the company, after using the onsite fitness center for a year and a half, one of their customer representatives lost 150 pounds. Isn’t that astonishing? Well, there’s more. According to a senior manager of the company running the benefits services, the fitness center has helped employees to be more productive both in work and life. The company says that after using its onsite fitness center, the employees become healthier, making them better equipped to solve problems, innovate and take initiative. This results in increased productivity and growth of the company.

Helping Improve Their Diet

Once again, you can’t force your employees to do something against their will. Specifically speaking, you can’t tell them what to and to not eat. Whether you like it or not, your employees will eat what they want. The only thing you can do to improve their diet is offer them healthier eating options. By offering healthy eating options on-premise, you will make them easily accessible to your employees. This will help to improve the diet of your employees, resulting in healthier and more productive employees.

Do your employees grab a McDonalds combo meal during lunch hours to satisfy their hunger cravings? If they do, then this is bad news for both the employees themselves and your business. So, even if your employees aren’t bothered about their diet, you should make an effort to encourage them to go for healthier eating options during lunch hours at work.  Don’t have the resources to provide healthy meals to your employees? Attend food-sales and stock up healthy items for your kitchen. And, then offer these food-items to your employees during the lunch hours.

Offer Childcare Services

Even if your company or business employs twenty or more people, then they’re bound to be people in your company who are a parent to infants or young kids. For such employees, the biggest concern is the well-being of their child(ren).  Whether they work full time or part time with you, the employees in your company with children will always be full time parents who need to take of their children and attend to their every need. And, this is most true for employees with infants or young children.

To take care of their concerns and allow them to focus completely on their work, offer the parents in your company an onsite childcare facility. This will keep your employees near to their children and it will provide them with the assurance that their children are with people they can trust and bank on to take care of their children.

In case you don’t have the resources to do the above, talk to any of the local childcare services and get discounts for your employees. Make childcare services as affordable as possible for your employees. This will allow them to leave their children with people they can trust, which in turn will alleviate their stress at work—stress that comes from issues at home such as the safety and care of children.

In addition to the aforementioned things, there’s a lot more you can do to keep your employees healthy and productive. With the expansion of wearables; one can monitor health 24/7.  Technology will continue to expand into the healthcare vertical and we are excited to be a part of it.  If you are in healthcare and looking for a good technology partner; our company has experience and ready to talk to you.  Just give me a call.

by Bobby J Davidson

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