Employee Wellness

Employee Wellness

The stress in today's society can have a huge impact on the way people do their jobs.  By introducing wellness initiatives into the workplace, employers are giving staff the tools to manage this stress and cope with everyday life.

 The benefits of workplace wellness for employers can include: 

• increased productivity and performance,
  
• decreased absenteeism and sick leave,
  
• improved morale
• decreased workplace mistakes, accidents and near-misses.
  
• decreased staff turnover
• becoming an employer of choice
• happy and healthy staff
  

Promoting wellness is not just about avoiding ill-health, but about proactively improving employee health and wellbeing.

Wellness initiatives should include good workplace practices that look at the causes of ill-health (eg long hours, shiftwork, fatigue) as well as its effects (eg breathing problems, poor fitness, absenteeism, workplace accidents).

Introducing wellness initiatives into your workplace

What are the kind of wellness initiatives you can introduce to your workplace? 

• Employee Assistance Programmes
• Provide gym memberships or discounted sports memberships
• Ask the Heart foundation or Cancer society to give free workshops
• Give employees a variety of wellness workshops, eg Stress Management, Team Building, Wellness
• Start a wellness committee to organise and initiate wellness activities in the workplace.
• Promote flexible work arrangements
• Consider wellness in workplace policies and practices. 
  

Employee Assistance Programmes

Employee assistance programmes (EAP) are becoming a popular workplace benefit.  Essentially it provides employees with 24 hour a day access to counseling. The employee maybe having difficulties with family, work or personal issues.   The service is completely confidential and employees are able to access this service 3 times (or more if you choose) per year.

 Issues that the employee maybe having:

• Personal Relationship and Family Issues
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Grief
• Personal and Work Stress
• Workplace Conflict
• Violence
• Financial or Budgeting
• Alcohol and Drugs

Provide gym memberships or discounted sports membership

Employers negotiate a discount for their employees for gym or sports memberships.  Other activities that could be subsidized include Yoga or Pilate classes.  Exercise is an important aspect of our overall health and well being, so it makes sense for employers to encourage staff to exercise and stay healthy. 

Ask the Heart foundation or Cancer society to give free workshops

The heart foundation, Cancer Society, your local District Health Board and other organisations are usually happy to give complimentary workshops. 

Give employees a variety of workplace wellness workshops, eg Stress Management, Team Building, Dealing with difficult people

Providing employees with a variety of workshops that will assist them to manage stress, deal with difficult situations, inform them about how to deal with bullying or harassment, gives them the tools to better cope with situations that may arise at work or in their personal lives.

 It also shows that as an employer, you care about your staff and their wellbeing.

Start a wellness committee to organise and initiate wellness activities in the workplace

Some workplaces in New Zealand assign the task of delivering workplace wellness activities to a committee of employees.  This empowers employees to target wellness from the ground up and encourages a much more collaborative way to manage workplace wellness. 

Consider wellness in workplace policies and practices

When developing workplace policies and procedures, how often do you consider the effects of these on employee wellness?  Or, do you incorporate wellness principals into your policies and procedures?

Need more help? 

or

visit the Equal Employment Opportunity

website to read about organisations that are embracing wellness in their workplace.