Workplace wellness is in the process of evolving.
Early efforts to establish healthy workplaces focused on safety at the workplace and injury prevention for workers.
More recently, programs are designed to support staff members to choose healthier behaviors like being more physically active or stopping smoking. Campaigns to increase awareness, educational sessions to broaden knowledge, opportunities to acquire new skills, and changes to policies to make it easier for staff members to make healthy choices are frequently included. This approach is taken because the workplace is a good way to reach people, since most adult Canadians invest a big part of their day at work.
While safety and lifestyle programs are 2 aspects that contribute to the health of staff members, workplace wellness is more effective when a third factor is brought into the equation-the environment at work.
How the workplace affects health.
Increasingly, it is recognized that the workplace itself has a powerful affect on people’s health. When individuals are satisfied with their job, they are more constructive and tend to be healthier. When employees feel that the environment at work is harmful, they feel stressed. Stress has a sizable influence on employee mental and physical health, and in turn, on productiveness.
Consultant Graham Lowe has identified five components of workplace culture that directly affect employees’ health and the health of the business overall-credibility, respect, fairness, pride, and camaraderie. The underlying idea is that businesses must genuinely are concerned about the wellbeing of their employees.
Employers today who want to attract and retain great staff members have leaders who be aware of the association between employee satisfaction and employee health and believe that workplace wellness is a business plan. Their management practices include making reasonable demands on time and energy, involving staff members in decision making, rewarding work well done, openly communicating, and offering support to balance life at home and work.
Employers know that staff members are looking for jobs that compensate well, have good benefits, are interesting, and include great health and safety programs. So in today’s competitive hiring market, it’s become more significant than ever for employers to enhance job satisfaction and ensure that staff members enjoy being on the job. Workplace wellness benefits both employers and staff members.
How does workplace wellness profit the business?
A workplace wellness initiative can help a corporation to:
• attract and keep staff members;
• cut the costs of disability, prescription drugs, and absenteeism;
• cut the effects of a stressful workplace;
• reduce health costs or keep them contained; and
• improve morale by planning a happy, supportive environment.
How Do Worksite Wellness Programs Benefit workers?
workers of companies that have a Employee Wellness Program are likely to have:
• increased awareness and knowledge of ways to improve their health;
• a better (less stressful) workplace;
• increased protection from injury;
• improved health and well-being;
• higher morale and greater job satisfaction;
• increased productiveness and success at work;
• reduced personal medical expenditures; and
• a more relaxed/flexible approach to health problems.
Both employers and staff members have a responsibility for planning a healthy workplace. Workers are expected to arrive at work in great health, and the company is expected to offer an environment that allows staff members to maintain great health, enjoy their work, and contribute to the company’s success.
Workplace wellness is much more than a “lunch and learn” program. It’s about beginning a “people first” approach to doing business. It’s about taking care of staff members, instituting a beneficial work environment, and paying attention to the factors that keep staff members healthy and happy at work. A great Employee Wellness Program has an effect on employees’ mental, physical, emotional, social, and spiritual well-being.