Top 10 Employee Wellness Programs for a Healthier and Happier Workplace

Employee wellness programs have gained traction in the corporate space in recent years as companies recognise the benefits of promoting a healthy lifestyle for their employees. These programs aim to improve employee health, reduce healthcare costs, increase productivity, and boost morale.  

However, when curating programs to help employees achieve better health and wellness results, it is important to know what should top the list. Here are some of the most important wellness initiatives for a healthier organisation.

Health Risk Assessments

Health risk assessments may seem cliché, but they are a great way to start the design process for workplace wellness initiatives. Health risk assessments, however, should not stop there, as seen in many organisations; they should lead to strategic planning and implementation of solutions to the myriad of health challenges collated.  

Employees with high blood pressure, overweight, high cholesterol, or diabetes, who are at risk of heart disease, should be started on tested measures, including weight loss programs, food wellness strategies, and targeted medical treatment to lower their risks.  

Health Coaching

Health coaches provide one-on-one guidance and support to employees looking to make lifestyle changes. These coaches can help employees set goals, create action plans, and track progress towards achieving better health.

Effective coaching integrates an employee’s personal, socioeconomic, and environmental health contexts to help them optimise their health outcomes. For instance, employees with obesity learn the most effective exercise regimen and healthiest diet options to achieve a healthier weight.  

Wellness Challenges

Wellness challenges are a fun and engaging way to motivate employees to adopt healthier habits. Some of these include physical activity challenges, stress reduction, and healthy eating competitions.

Not only do these events spur employee participation and engagement, but they also make wellness more fun and exciting. However, it is important to keep these events purposeful and centred on achieving set health metrics, or they lose their relevance over time.  

Employee Assistance Programs

Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) provide employees with access to counselling and resources to achieve better healthcare results. These programs help employees cope with daily work challenges and work closely with wellness managers to redesign workplace wellness strategies.  

EAPs are also crucial in helping employees find the most appropriate solution for their needs. For instance, finance wellness coaches for those struggling with financial management and mental health crisis treatment for patients with severe mental health concerns.  

Food Wellness

Poor diet can be linked to many chronic illnesses, including diabetes, high blood pressure, and certain cancers. Incorporating food wellness into workplace wellness programs is a brilliant way to help employees lower their risk of these diseases.  

Food wellness initiatives could be as simple as sending resources and information fact sheets to employees about healthy food options, hosting regular food events where only healthy food options are served, or nutritional coaching where employees are taught about the various health risks of different foods.

Smoke Assessment Programs

Smoking cessation programs can help employees quit smoking and lower their risk of smoking-related diseases, including lung and bowel cancer, COPD, asthma attacks, and stroke. You may also need to support these programs by implementing strong workplace smoking policies, such as creating no-smoking zones.

Smoke cessation programs provide employees with resources that will help them quit the habit, as well as smoke replacement strategies that pose a lower health risk and help them stop smoking.  

Mindfulness and Meditation

Practising mindfulness is an effective way of improving mental health. Mindfulness exercises, such as meditation and yoga, help to lower stress, improve focus and alertness, and also improve overall well-being.  

You may carve out a meditation room to allow employees to engage in mindfulness during their breaks, or you can also provide employees access to virtual meditation sessions and meditation coaches to improve the experience.  

Sleep Wellness

For many organisations, an employee sleeping at work may be a sign of incompetence or poor self-control. Still, many times, the cause may simply be burnout, financial stress, or sleep deprivation.  

Encourage your workers to get a healthy amount of sleep every day. You may need to do this by prohibiting email messages after work hours or during the weekends, and putting together a sleep room in the office where they could take power naps when needed.  

Ergonomic Assessments

Ergonomic assessments can help employees identify and address issues with their workstations that could be causing physical discomfort or injury. Many cases of musculoskeletal disorders, such as neck pain and back pain, among employees can be tied to poor ergonomic conditions, which can be corrected with the right ergonomic evaluation.  

Ergonomic assessments do not stop at providing employees with the right desks and chairs, but they also extend to providing employees with physical therapy lessons and training on healthy work habits to lower the risk of some of these ergonomic-related concerns

Financial Wellness

Financial wellness is an often-ignored component of wellness in many organisations.  Financial issues notably stress workers, and this often leads to mental, physical, and emotional stress.  

Financial wellness programs seek to help employees manage their finances more effectively, reducing financial stress and improving overall well-being. These programs can include financial counselling, retirement planning, debt management, and educating employees about their economic benefits.  

Implementing an employee wellness program can have a significant positive impact on both employees and the company as a whole. 

Source: Corporate Wellness Magazine. (n.d.). Top 10 employee wellness programs for a healthier and happier workplace. Retrieved from https://www.corporatewellnessmagazine.com/article/top-10-employee-wellness-programs-for-a-healthier-and-happier-workplace