How to Kickstart Your Employee Wellbeing Program

Employees are valuable assets to your business. Without them, how would your business function? Being considerate, kind and understanding to your employees not only creates a nicer work environment, but also boosts employee productivity. When your employees feel valued, they take greater pride in their job and strive for the best. This is why it’s important to implement an Employee Wellbeing Program to help your staff achieve their greatest potential.

What is an Employee Wellbeing Program?

An employee wellbeing program covers a range of areas that are deemed essential to keeping employees healthy, active and happy. A program must be designed with may factors in mind such as:

  • Creating work/life balance
  • Providing a safe environment
  • Creating a supportive environment
  • Promoting health and wellness amongst employees, and addressing both physical and mental health

How to Start an Employee Wellbeing Program

When embarking on developing an employee wellbeing program, there are a few steps involved.

Budget

First of all, you should review your budget so that you can determine what type of program you can afford. You should also consider how many activities you want to offer.  This depends on the number of staff employed and evaluating what they would benefit from the most. You should also ask yourself and the firm offering wellness services the following questions:

  • What types of wellness plans are available?
  • Are the instructors qualified, reputable and certified?
  • Are there group or block booking discounts?

Some types of Employee Wellbeing Plans include:

Health and fitness – Health is a priority, therefore, one way to kickstart an employee wellbeing program is to allow your team time to exercise. Yoga, Pilates and personal training can be very beneficial to employees, especially if they don’t have a fitness routine of their own. Scheduling sessions during the working week, before after or during scheduled work breaks can allow employees to unwind, meditate, and learn how to take care of themselves. There are several ways in which you can arrange fitness classes with Winning Hands. You can use live in person or online sessions, prerecorded sessions (allows more time flexibility) or a combination of both allowing those who like the community feel of live classes to participate in those while also including those who can’t commit to a certain time for a live class but would still like to be able to participate. We quote for these classes on request, depending on the class size, location, time and class type.

On-site Massage – Offering your team massage slots on a regular basis either at their desk or in a chill out zone in the office is the quickest and most effective way to increase workplace happiness.  We find the best format for this is weekly, across a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday between the hours of 10am-4pm.  Feedback from clients tells us that this is when people feel the mid-week slump the most and need that extra push to motivate themselves to the end of the week.

Beauty treatments – such as express manicures or express facials can be such a valuable perk to those who may otherwise have to use their lunch breaks to get these done. Looking and feeling your best is a big part of performing your best and this is a lovely perk to offer your team as part of an employee wellness schedule.  Suggested timings are similar to the on-site massage above.

Set Up a Schedule

Once you’ve figured out what you want to provide for your employees to boost their well-being, you need to start up a schedule. Choose days and times that can facilitate employee wellness sessions. You can consider booking sessions in on days of the week that are not as hectic and better allow employees to have time off to engage in their wellness sessions without a drop in productivity.

Other ways to add to your Employees Wellbeing

It takes more than just a few fitness classes or counselling sessions a week to ensure your employees are looked after. Here some more ideas on how to create the ideal work environment:

  • Ensure safety protocols are in place and communicate what these are well in advance.
  • Repair or upgrade furniture, equipment, technology and other physical environmental factors (lighting is so important!) to ensure the working environment is as conducive to good quality work as it can be
  • Consider giving employees additional days off over and above annual leave as bonus or reward days for milestones
  • Allow time in the working day for lunch breaks, quiet time or employee wellness sessions
  • Let employees know that they can talk to you about any issue they have
  • Work together with employees to improve work relationships and team building
  • Maintain consistency with your efforts to provide a comfortable work environment

Takeaway

A happy team results in many great benefits for both staff and employer. Employees who love their job and feel safe and valued work hard to achieve goals, and have a higher rate of productivity which boosts the company’s reputation and performance. Investing in your workforce is investing in the growth of your business in addition to improving the quality of life of your staff.

At Winning Hands we take a 360-degree approach to employee wellbeing. With highly qualified therapists ready to take you on a journey of physical and mental wellbeing.  Contact us today to discuss the many options we offer to kickstart your Employee Wellbeing Program.