How to get employees to take fewer sick days

Any employer knows the inconveniences and problems that can be caused by employees taking their sick days. Whether the employee is really ill, or has just used this sick day as a day of vacation, it can cost the company money. What can a company do to help decrease the number of sick days that their employees use in a year? There are actually a lot of possible solutions to this problem. This article will discuss a few of these solutions.

Employee wellness program

Establishing an employee wellness program can be a great step in the right direction of getting employees to take fewer sick days. Employee wellness programs promote wellness. Wellness programs offer a variety of ways for employees to stay healthy. These programs encourage exercise for the employees of a company. Wellness programs can offer one-on-one help to set up an exercise program that will really help an employee get into and stay in shape, lose weight, and stay healthy. People who exercise are sick less often. Eating a healthy diet also helps to keep employees healthy. Wellness programs can teach employees how to make good food choices, tell them tips about how to eat healthy at work, and home, and even when they eat out. When people eat healthy they decrease their risk of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes to name a few. Eating healthy helps to keep employees healthy.

Another part of wellness programs is teaching employees how to deal with stressors. There are positive stressors and negative stressors and sometimes employees don't know how to deal with stress very well. A wellness program can offer help to individuals to help them eliminate some stressors and deal with the ones that have to stay in their lives. Employees who are stressed and don't deal well with their stressors are sick more often. Having a wellness program that teaches employees how to handle their stress the right way will keep employees healthy.

Keep a healthy office

There are a lot of different ways to keep an office healthy. One such way is to put a sign in each of the bathrooms reminding employees to wash their hands before exiting the restroom. Having employees wash their hands is one of the best ways to keep germs from spreading. Keeping hand sanitizer on employees' desks can also help to stop employees from spreading germs that cause disease.

Having the office cleaned regularly is another important step to keeping employees healthy and helping them take less sick days. Items such as keyboards and desk become full of germs from day-to-day use and during a regular cleaning may get overlooked. But these pieces of furniture and appliances should not be bypassed during a cleaning.

Sometimes an employee really is just too sick to come into work. If this is the case, this employee should be encouraged to stay home. If they were to come into work the other employees would be exposed to the germs and would be at an increased risk for getting sick, thus having to also use employee sick days.

Just ask them

Another technique for employers to encourage employees to take less sick days is to ask them. Employers can hold a meeting discussing the importance of employees taking less sick days. It might take a little extra nudge to get employees to participate in this request. Employers can offer rewards for employees who use the least amount of sick days in a year.