5 Strategies That Improve Workplace Well-Being
Published January 12, 2016
Striving to improve productivity?
Wanting to lower health care costs?
Hoping to decrease absenteeism and turnover?
Then invest in your employees’ well-being.
Healthy workers miss less work, perform better, incur fewer health care costs, and are less likely to quit. In fact, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics figures the average sick day costs a company about $348 in lost productivity. People with higher levels of well-being get sick less often, so they cost the company less.
Those are terrific reasons to promote workday wellness and integrate healthy living initiatives into your workplace. Here are five tactics to try.
1. Build in Wellness
- Increase the ergonomics. Ergonomic furnishings increase comfort and wellness, reduce slowdowns from pain, and decrease potential workers compensation claims. Keep work from becoming a literal pain in the neck with ergonomic chairs and keyboards. Ease aches and other impacts from a day of sitting by enabling employees to change positions frequently with adjustable-height desks and desk risers, and antifatigue mats that ease foot, knee and ankle pain (especially for staff who stand at workstations or cash registers).
- Use proper lighting. The right amount of high, low or natural light enhances visibility and morale, and lessens eyestrain. Install overhead lighting that’s adjustable to task-appropriate levels, and provide desk lamps that simulate natural daylight to improve alertness and visibility. Enable additional adjustments with anti-glare filters for computer screens.
- Combine work and wellness. Regular movement burns calories and helps ease compression and other painful conditions that can lead to lost workdays. Start small with under-desk ellipticals or cycling units, or go big with treadmill desks or stationary bike workstations.
- Use floor mats. Floor mats can reduce slips and falls from wet surfaces and keep a lot of germs from gaining entry. ISSA, a global cleaning trade group, estimates that 15 feet of high-performance scraping matting can trap and hold as much as 75 percent of grime and gunk at the door.
- Reduce dust, mold and allergens. Reduce the health risks associated with dust, mold and other germs with regular cleaning. Use dusters to capture irritants on surfaces. Invest in personal air purifiers and humidifiers for extra-sensitive team members. Routinely clean air vent covers, filters and floor drains.
- Wipe down high-touch surfaces. Just think of how many germy hands touch door handles, stair railings, elevator buttons, copiers, phones, water coolers, vending machines and ATMs. Gah! Advise employees to wipe down their workstations, phones and anything else they lay their hands on with disinfecting wipes.
3. Encourage Healthier Breaks
- Provide better nutrition. Help employees stay alert and healthy with smart snack options like trail mix, granola bars and fresh fruits. Making these items freely available in bulk or via vending machines curtails out-of-office snack runs and keeps productivity and wellness high.
- Hype hydration. Water, whether bottled or on tap, is a great tool for increased wellness. Proper hydration ups metabolism and helps rid our bodies of toxins and other icky stuff. It can also ease distractions like headaches, fatigue and hunger pangs. Employees can use their own reusable water bottles or you can grow team spirit with customized or branded containers.
4. Fight the Flu
- Advocate to vaccinate. Your business literally can’t afford not to advocate that employees get annual flu vaccinations. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that 111 million workdays are lost to the flu annually, racking up $7 billion in costs associated with sick days and lost productivity.
- Educate employees. Many employees don’t understand the business cost of the flu. Share ideas, display informative posters and see if your health insurer or local healthcare provider can send an expert to present healthy habits at your next staff meeting or employee orientation.
5. Leverage Technology
- Make it easy to work from home. Sixty percent of employees say they go into the office when sick, reducing their output and effectiveness and exposing colleagues to germs and infection. Providing proper mobile technology, remote network access, teleconferencing and other technology infrastructure allows sick staffers to contribute more effectively from a safe distance while they recuperate.
Good employee well-being is good business. How good? A Gallup study found that health-related costs for employees with thriving well-being are 41 percent lower than their struggling counterparts. And your healthiest staffers are more likely to stay in your employ, charting a 35 percent lower turnover rate than other workers.
Use these tips to help your employees work healthy and be happy.