Enhancing a positive company culture means caring for the individual in the first place.
Top employers prioritize the health of their most valuable asset – the employees – as they know how important their overall intrinsic engagement is for a positive output.
Only a few companies know that depression and anxiety disorders account for around one trillion US Dollars per year in global productivity losses, according to the World Health Organization.
Promoting emotional health and well-being at work is as important as it is for physical health. Taking care of employees directly impacts the company’s relationship to customers and reflects what they stand for to the outside.
Tradition or Fashion?
Traditional hierarchies and environments are losing attraction to the new, primarily younger workforce individuals through their obvious pressure of expecting hard work in a control-and-demand environment.
Nowadays, work is still the place we spend most of our waking hours, but the mindset has considerably shifted through more and more diverse incentives of modern workplaces.
There has to be something else than dusty hierarchies, stiff structures, and linearity. Individuals no longer want to sacrifice their life for a workplace that is not perceived as valuable for them, and the employer’s expectations will only be met when their values align.
Companies need to understand that work is supposed to be a place of collaboration, communication and intuition, where well-being is part of the culture. Productivity, creativity and engagement follow this lead that builds retention.
Win-Win Through Corporate Well-Being
Finding useful initiatives to support the workforce’s health and happiness creates a positive employee experience that flows straight into the customer experience by enabling employees to look after themselves and being their best selves in their performance.
Important is that those wellness-programs should not be short-lived, but a permanent conviction and belief of the company towards their core values and supporting a thriving company culture.
Salary is no longer the primary factor of retention in nowadays’ modern workplaces. There will always be a competitor who pays more, so what else does your company have to offer?
It Doesn’t Have to be Crazy Initiatives!
There are certain programs that might be quite expensive and exceed a budget when it comes to wellness and health programs within a company. It is up to each corporation to evaluate the content and scope of implementation, according to their possibilities. Not every company wants to invest in a gym on-site or risking employees feeling peer-pressure for joining sport-programs and generating discouragement.
Here are some examples of cost- and benefit-efficient initiatives to promote the importance of health at work and boost energy:
- Healthy Snacks: Offer fruit and vegetables instead of chocolate and candy in meetings and have them frequently available
- Plants: Plants have a calming, nourishing effect on people’s well-being – why not decorate the workspace greener with a lot of well-placed plants?
- Quiet-Zones: Dedicate an office space to a “quiet-zone” or meditation room
- Flexi-work: Implement flexible work hours, home-office-days and remote work options
- On-site doctor’s visit: If the budget allows it you can offer regular health-screenings and vaccinations on-site, so that people don’t have to take care of these things in their spare-time
- Vouchers for achievements: Spas, retreats and coaching sessions for people who are walking what they talk
Promoting Instead of Forcing
You see, there are a lot of things you can do as an employer when you are open to see health benefits as a contributor to company success, thus crucial.
Create awareness, communicate the importance of health and happiness to your teams and show yourself as a role-model of participation in things that you offer.
Don’t force people to go to the gym every day or mandatorily participate in sports programs. This may create resistance to those who don’t find the gym appealing, and it has no effect on people who go there anyway. Nobody will start being a daily guest at the gym because of being told so.
Motivation starts inside.
And it starts with little steps at the workplace to promote health and by letting it be a positive guideline from leadership.
Eventually, people will take it in and chose activities and programs for their personal life, out of intrinsic motivation, when they get taught to look after themselves at work since they learn to see themselves as an indispensable part of common success.
>> What are you doing to support people’s health and happiness at work? I am curious.
