The health of your employees is crucial if you want to promote a happy and productive work environment. the problem is, work can often be a place where health goals go out of the window and unhealthy habits are formed. Employees are often encouraged to sit down for long periods of time, don’t have access to healthy food options, and work long hours. Here’s how you can promote good health in the workplace.
Provide a healthy breakfast
There’s nothing wrong with an early start. But employees are often rushed to work, without the opportunity to grab a healthy breakfast. As an employer, you could offer healthy breakfast foods that workers can grab when they arrive. Fruit, cereals, and yogurt are all relatively inexpensive but will help your employees start the day off in the right way. You don’t have to consider what food you can offer. You could also consider providing free supplements from a company such as neubria.com. Providing supplements as well as a hearty breakfast will leave your employees feeling ready for the day ahead and could boost their productivity levels.
Identify and manage stress
Work can be stressful. When deadlines need to be met and there’s a lot of work to do, some stress is unavoidable. However, as an employer, you should work to identify stress and reduce it where possible. Schedule regular meetings with your employees and ask them about their workload and stress levels. Encourage them to be honest about their job and help them manage stress.
Reduce sitting time
Office jobs involve a lot of sitting down; however, studies have shown that a sedentary lifestyle can lead to heart disease, cancer, and more. To reduce sitting time, you could install standing desks, giving employees the opportunity to stand up. Also, schedule regular five-minute breaks where employees can walk around the office and stretch their legs.
Install a gym
Installing a gym in the office will involve some initial set-up costs, but it will encourage workers to exercise and stay healthy. Before making this decision, talk to your employees and ask if they would use a gym and what equipment they would need. Another additional benefit is that an office gym could promote team building.
Build a healthy lunch routine
Encouraging employees to work through lunchtime promotes bad health. Getting a break from screens, eating a healthy lunch, and stretching our legs are important. Not only will a lunch break encourage productivity, but it will also boost the mood of your workforce. You could also offer healthy food options for free.
Encourage hand-washing
If you want to reduce the number of sick days that your employees take, you should install hand-washing stations around the office. This is a small way to improve the health and safety of office workers.
Reduce digital eye strain
Staring at a screen for eight hours a day isn’t good for your eyes. You can reduce the damage by encouraging regular breaks and offering blue-light-blocking glasses to your employees. Talk to them about the risks of digital eye strain and promote ways to help them mitigate the damage.
Install a healthy vending machine
People often make unhealthy decisions because they’re easy. Throw out the old vending machine that is full of unhealthy snacks and install a healthy alternative—making healthy choices easy for your employees.
