Managing health in the workplace

Employers play a large role in the health of their employees. When an individual needs to sit for upwards of 8 hours a day it can take a large toll on their body. As an employer it is your responsibility to try and get your employees to get up and get active so they can focus on keeping their bodies healthier. Finding time for physical activity at work isn't the easiest thing to do but by adding in some things like exercise balls, wellness programs, and including time for exercise in the work hours is a great way to help your employees find time to exercise.

Here are some of the most common problems that arise in the office:

• Unhealthy eating habits


• Smoking


• Lack of exercise and movement


• High stress levels


• Depression and lack of motivation

What can an employer do to help out with these challenges that their staff members are facing? Stress is one of the things that you have a lot of control over and will be able to help your employees with. Stress often leads to heart diseases and many other concerns as it can increase your heart rate and can also cause your employees to lose their motivation to work hard and causes burnout. Employees that are under a lot of stress might also take off a lot of time from work just to recover from their higher stress loads. As an employer you need to start watching for the signs and symptoms of stress and start talking to your employees about their stress loads. If you see that they are starting to fall behind on their work and they appear to have lost their motivation, you need to sit down with them and discuss ways in which you can help them. This will include reducing their workloads or changing dates on projects to give them enough time to actually accomplish the work they need to get done. In addition to chopping the workloads and making them manageable you also need to provide your employees with time to rest and relax. Provide them with a nice break room where they can go to detox after a long and stressful day. Add a massage chair and other things in the room so they do have time to let their mind rest and they don't need to think about work for a little while.

Although stress management is one of the biggest obstacles you need to deal with you also need to work on introducing regular exercise into the office. This is one of the best things you can do for the health of your employees. What you need to do is to work on creating an exercise room for your staff. They need a place where they can actually exercise and enjoy working out. An exercise room is a great way to give them access to what they need but you also need to provide them with time. Try offering an extra 30 minutes in the day for exercise time. This way your staff will be able to go outside and walk around or they can use the onsite exercise facilities.

Smoking cessation is another one of the things you want to work on. Smoking can lead to so many different health concerns not only for the employees that smoke but for the employees that have to breathe in the second-hand smoke. There are so many great benefits to a smoke-free workplace that a business should start working on a smoking cessation program now. Provide your employees with tips on how to quit smoking along with great reasons to quit smoking so they can start to see how it can impact their life for the better.