There are many ways that employers can incorporate employee wellbeinginto the workplace and their employees’ lives., Big or small, all companies and organizations can benefit from some form of a workplace wellbeing at workservices or program. The services can be run as individual activities simply once a year, multiple times a year or as part of a scheduled program with specific dates set out in advance.

The health and wellness of employees usually has a direct effect on the productivity and profits of a company. Employees are invaluable ‘assets’ of any company and ensuring their excellent mental and physical health sets them up to perform well. A good employee wellness program should cater to the employees’ emotional, physical and mental wellness. The suggestions below for workplace wellness activities will enrich your organisation or company culture and improve overall wellness.

Most wellness services can be run either face to face or online, so even when Hybrid working, all employees can still participate in the wellness services being run.

1. Office Yogaand /or meditation is an extremely effective stress reliever. These classes can be run online or face to face to no-one need miss out. The suggested times to run these sessions are either as lunchtime sessions or at the end of the day. The sessions work particularly well when run as weekly classes so that employees build this into their work routine.

2. Healthy snacks are a great and cost-effective way for employers to try and change unhealthy work habits and create a healthy eating culture in the office. Some ways to offer this would be to have a fruit bowl that is replenished each week, a cupboard of healthy snacks or once a moth a healthy lunch can be ordered in to treat staff to.

3. Workplace wellness challenges- from health challenges to fitness challenges, are effective in promoting healthy lifestyles within your workforce. They encourage employees to engage in workouts, drink more water and eat healthier and motivates people to reach goals, interact with their colleagues, and improve their wellness habits.

4. Wellness workshops and Wellness Webinars – these sessions are short enough to be held over a lunch break and with the advantage of running these sessions as webinars, these sessions can be recorded allowing staff to watch them at any time. Wellness workshopscan cover a wide range of topics that should cater for everyone’s physical and mental wellbeing needs. A popular choice is to select topics and run these as monthly lunch and learn sessions.

5. Annual Employee health checks–employee health screeningcan be a great way for staff to check their vital stats and possibly pick up on anything that might need to be checked out further with a GP. Short Employee Health checks can include, glucose, cholesterol testing, BMI and blood pressure. These health checks take between 10 – 20mins meaning that many staff can be checked over the course of a day

6. Weekly massage – Onsite chair massage in the workplace is one of the most popular wellbeing activities that companies run. Chair massageis cost effective, doesn’t take too long that is disrupt your day, is popular amongst everyone and very easy to arrange. Employees always feel relaxed, pampered and come out of the massage feeling both relaxed, energised and often more productive.

7. National Health promotion days – The year is filled with many National Awareness days. Some of these relate specifically to areas of Health – such as National Stress Awareness Day, Heart Health month, Mental Health awareness Week etc. Incorporating these days into your company’s annual program, can give you direction as to how and what to focus on employee Health promotionin the workplace.

8. Bank of wellbeing resources to access at any time – the resources are ideally online so that employees can then tap into this at any point. The resources should cover a wide range of topics and areas of health so that everyone will find something that is relevant to them. Suggestions for online resources are a range of wellbeing factsheets and on demand wellness videos.

9. DSE assessments – Annual DSE (Display Screen Equipment) assessments ensure that employees are sitting comfortable whether at work or at home and ensures that everyone has a Healthy and safe work set up

10. Lead by example – this perhaps is one of the key factors to the success of implanting wellness services into the workplace. It is imperative that Directors and mangers are also involved and participate in the services so that the message filters down to all staff that wellness is important for everyone.