The typical corporate workplace can become a little stale after a while. Your eyes can get strained from staring at a computer screen, fingers can become sore from typing, and your back can start to hurt after a long time sitting in a chair.
Corporate wellness programs are becoming more important and implemented for improving employee performance. Corporate wellness programs promote many benefits of a healthy lifestyle for employees. By incorporating workplace health promotion activities, employees are able to get their juices flowing, making them more motivated to perform better at work.
From offering healthy snacks and fitness classes to adding morning stretching routines and annual walk-a-thons, there are plenty of ideas to choose from to promote employee health and wellness.
Helping your employees stay happy and healthy will ultimately lead to a more engaged, productive, and positive workforce. These programs are an excellent investment and can even be a whole lot of fun for employees everywhere. And, who knows? Engaging in healthy activities at work could motivate people to practice healthier habits outside of work as well!
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at 5 employee wellness program ideas for your office! Reap the benefits of implementing your employee wellness program by using some of these fun and healthy activities!
1. Walking Meetings
As human beings, we’re not meant to be sitting all the time. We need to get up and move around to maintain a healthy circulation throughout our bodies. Even if you stand up and walk around the room once every hour for a few minutes each workday, you can significantly improve your health and wellness routine.
Incorporating walking meetings into your workplace wellness program is an excellent way of making sure that everyone gets up and moves around throughout their day. You can even take these meetings outside for a little fresh air, which could potentially stimulate creativity.
2. Meditation Breaks
Stress management is an important part of any employee wellness program. The typical corporate work environment can get stressful from time to time, so it’s crucial that you practice stress management strategies to help combat the effects of high stress.
Take a short break to meditate during the day. This will significantly reduce stress levels and help employees to refocus their energies for improved productivity. You’d be surprised at how meditation can help you to de-stress. Just 10 minutes a day can make an enormous difference.
3. Fitness Activities
Encourage your employees to engage in some physical activity during the workday by offering on-site fitness activities or classes. You can schedule these classes or activities during breaks or lunch hours.
These fitness activities could consist of yoga, stretching, aerobics, or just walking in place. Be creative with this idea, since you can do just about anything. Remember not to go overboard by adding high-intensity exercises since there might be some employees that are unable to complete such exercises for health reasons.
A good idea would be to distribute some type of equipment to perform these exercises, whether it’s yoga mats, kettle balls, resistance bands, or light weights.
4. Flu Shots
Nobody likes getting flu shots. However, getting an annual flu shot is a whole lot better than catching the flu. Prevention is the name of the game when it comes to health and wellness. Proving flu vaccines during flu season is a perfect way to prevent the flu illness from creeping into the workplace.
Hire an on-site nurse to administer flu shots to everyone in the office. That way, employees aren’t forced to venture to the pharmacy or doctor’s office to get their flu shots. They can just get them right at work! Easy peasy, right?
5. Healthy Snacks
When those hunger pains start to take over, we tend to gravitate towards unhealthy snacks like chips, cookies, candy bars, pretzels, or soda. Stocking the office with healthy snacks can significantly improve your employees eating habits, which can ultimately lead to improved focus, productivity, and energy.
Get some trail mix packages, fresh fruits, granola bars, water bottles, and other healthy food options that you’ll employees will love. Perhaps you can invest a little spending money on buying a healthy lunch for everyone in the office once a month. This could significantly improve office morale and give everyone the boost of energy that they need to complete a productive day’s work.