How healthy is your workplace?

There are many workplaces in the United States that are not healthy and their employees are living sedentary and unhealthy lifestyles. Since the average workday is about 7.6 hours, employers need to come up with different ways in which they can focus on promoting good health habits. This may include things such as implementing a wellness program which will help your employees to work on healthier eating and lifestyle choices.

An employer has many different ways to strengthen their employee's health through the following methods:

• Meeting with employees to go over their wellness and health needs and finding ways to help. They may ask for different healthcare options or may need help with getting gym members and other wellness things. By meeting them you will be able to have insight into your employee's lives and to know what they really need and want from your company.


• Starting a wellness program that encourages employees to start making strides toward healthier lifestyle habits like quitting smoking, losing weight, or implementing exercise.


• Bringing in life coaches to help employees see what they can do to help strengthen their bodies and to also see what current health risks they need to be concerned about.


• Evaluating employees jobs and workloads to help decrease their stress level. Stress is one of the biggest problems in many organizations and it doesn't take long to find ways to help employees learn how to start controlling and managing their stress. It often takes adjusting schedules and shifting workloads to be balanced among your entire staff.

If you do choose to implement a wellness program you need to be sure that you are sharing the results with your employees. Your staff needs to see the major improvements that you have been able to make such as weight loss among the entire company along with other great things like reducing your health care costs.

There are some companies that have taken strides to work hard and create a wellness program but they still fail to see results from the program. If it seems like your staff isn't working hard to make the company healthier, here are some other things you need to try doing with your wellness program:

• Are you participating in the program? A large part of the success of a wellness program will depend on your participation. Your staff members need an example to look at when it comes to wellness programs and you are the best example they have.


• How often are your employees getting health screenings? Can you bring a medical team on site to offer yearly health screenings to your employees? This is a great way to motivate them as they are able to find out what they need to change in their diet and how to go about changing it.


• Can you provide your employees with extra time to exercise? If they don't have an extra 20 minutes built into their schedule for exercise they may end up finding it hard to exercise and work on living healthier lives.

If your company has yet to implement a wellness program now is the time to do so. You have to look at all the costs that employee health is currently costing your company and compare it to the costs you can save if you implement the program. The National Wellness Institute will be able to help you implement a wellness program as they have several training tools and resources that you can use to help with the implementation of the program. At first you will need to invest some money into the program, but with all the savings it provides this cost will be paid off quite quickly.