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What is Workplace Wellness?
Is your employees' health important to you? It certainly should be. Where would you or your company be without the people who make it run? You can improve your employees' health, morale, and loyalty in one simple investment, and your returns on that investment are hard to measure because of how great they could be. That investment is a workplace wellness program.
In its most basic definition, workplace wellness is creating a work environment that is healthy for your employees and encouraging healthy activity, eating, and education to improve your employees' overall health. Employers commit to making their company a healthy workplace and encourage employees to participate in a healthy lifestyle program in and outside of work. Wellness programs can include increasing employee awareness of their health factors and health topics, implementing behavioral change programs, and establishing company policies that focus on health-related objectives.
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Workplace wellness, however, doesn't just focus on how physically fit your employees are or how often they get sick, although that is one part of it. There are five dimensions that workplace wellness covers:
Fitness, nutrition, purpose in life, financial planning, social connections and support systems, stress management, career planning, and continued education could all be a part of your comprehensive workplace wellness program.
Workplace wellness programs are sprouting up all over the country and there has been a big focus on how to build and implement such programs. Why? The answer lays in the benefits of workplace wellness programs. Some of the benefits include:
Employees are spending more and more time at work or in work-related activities. Modern technology such as laptops and blackberry's, a declining economy, and more demands on your employees are realities that extend the typical forty hour work week to far more than the average American thinks he or she works. Your employees don't have time to devote to health and wellness pursuits and it is affecting their health and thus affecting your bottom line. If you really expect your employees to be at their peak performance, they need to be healthy.
Basically, implementing a workplace wellness program in your company affects your bottom line, for the better. Not all the results are measurable in dollars, but most corporations that have tracked what a workplace wellness program has done for their companies have claimed returns on their investment of hundreds of dollars per employee. For example, a case study reported by FedEx saw a return on investment of $134 per employee on the workplace wellness program just by providing hand sanitizer to their employees.
Most corporations who have implemented workplace wellness programs have reported similar statistics and that the return on their investment is greatest two to four years after implementing the program. Take a look at what your employees are costing your company now in time, money, innovation, and productivity. You and your employees can do better.
As chronic disease such as obesity, diabetes and cardio vascular disease plague our country, stress related illness and disorders are on the rise, and the economy is struggling, there is something you can do to make sure your company weathers the storms. Invest in a workplace wellness program. As you turn your focus from productivity to employee health, you will see an increase in productivity. As you turn your focus from dollars and cents to the worth of your employees you will experience an increase in profits, innovation, and company loyalty. Wouldn't that be a sound investment?
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