How to engage employees using workplace wellness
Wellness and incentive programs can be used to drive and reinforce healthy behaviours. Employee wellness programs benefits result in increased employee productivity.
After January 1st, the New Year resolution for healthy food, physical fitness, and self-care ended up at KFC, Burger King, and Pizza hut for many corporate employees, primarily due to busy schedules or a lack of motivation. Driving the motivation and enthusiasm among employees to be healthy physically and mentally is what the organizations are prioritizing these days. The traditional forms of motivation which include recognition mail, motivational quotes, wall of fame, and rewards are losing their charm. The increased uncertainty, flexibility at work, virtual team management, and the ever-changing environment demand certain initiations by the organizations such as motivation by doing or experiencing over verbal communications. Thus, the organizations are now clubbing the wellness initiations under the umbrella of “Employee Wellness Programmes”. The motto is to promote a healthy work environment and culture through effective employee engagement.
Read Also: Wellbeing In And Around Workspace
But, the question is How? Because engaging employees at the workplace not only involves strategies based on directive measures or policy of the organization but also calls for an emotional and moral engagement. Over that the tendency of the Z generation to get fed up with any system or values in a short period makes it more difficult. As an experienced Human Resources Professional, I found that it easy to operate a machine with the help of a switch but difficult to engage humans with subjective emotions, logic, and conscience. However, let’s discuss the current trends in how Human Resource Professionals are promoting employee engagement through employee wellness programs:
Wellness Chart
Creating and communicating about the wellness chart of the year well in advance will create a sense of excitement among the employees, which in turn motivates them to participate when they find things they are passionate about. It will not only help the organization to measure the effectiveness of their wellness programs but also give them a weapon to drive engagement.
Wellness Challenges
Setting feasible, fun, exciting wellness challenges - keeping track of carbohydrate intake, number of pops taken in a week, amount of junk food, and daily push-ups challenges will boost the engagement of employees. Creative and innovative ideas will increase participation. Individual and team challenges like 30-day challenges, step challenges, being scheduled challenges, and others will act as a catalyst to boost employee morale and engagement.
Online strategies for stress relief
Stress is inevitable in corporate culture as the expression of emotions is subject to corporate policy. Providing physical stress relief programs through meditation, concentration, or letting employees learn to say respectful No are some of the effective forms of engagement of employees at the workplace. However, letting the employee learn about coping strategies,
flow techniques through online courses provided by third-party educational outsource agencies like (peak mind.in) will also help them strengthen their emotional involvement at work.
Celebration of National/International Days
Promoting healthy habits for sound physical and mental health by using holidays dedicated to body and mind development is also a part of employee wellness programs. Creating and promoting awareness importance of happiness on International Happiness day (March, 20), how to keep your heart healthy sessions on World Heart Day (September, 29), how to refrain from sedatives on World No-Tobacco Day (May, 31) will keep employees engaged at work and improves the commitment towards organizations.
Social Media Wellness encouragement
Encouraging employees to post their wellness schedule or achievements, success stories, wellness journey on the official page of the organization on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram is one of the best ways to let the concerned employee feel satisfied and motivate the rest.
Integral wellness Plans
Engaging employees through wellness programs are not limited to physical or mental wellness; rather the plans should focus on the integral development of employees. So incorporating strategies to promote emotional wellness, financial wellness, intellectual development, working on weaknesses, nutritional effects, and developmental techniques will help the organization to motivate its employees in long term.
To sum up, employee wellness programs are powerful tools that can bring a difference in the physical and mental spheres of employees and their ability to contribute to the organization. The organizations must understand what elements are necessary for the long-term success of a wellness program and how to carry out the activities to achieve the desired target.
Read Also: HOW TO DEAL WITH NEGATIVE THOUGHTS AT WORK
EMPLOYEE WELLNESS PROGRAMS BENEFITS
A company is from its employees and the more happy & satisfied employees are, the more productive they would be, and thus, the more growth a company would make. Hence, it is safe to say that employees' mental well-being is directly proportional to the growth of the company. However, in a survey by The7thFold, it was revealed that nearly 36% of Indian employees are suffering from mental health issues and nearly 50% are worried about the uncertainty this pandemic has brought on them.
In this situation, an Employee Wellness Program benefits companies by providing the right mental health counseling to their employees. Let's quickly discuss the benefits of our Employee Wellness Program:
1. Employees are more confident to share their feeling with an outsider rather than someone from the company, and especially someone who they think can understand them better.
2. Our experts clear their "Mental Blocks" which helps them to have clarity of thoughts.
3. Also helps them in maintaining long-term mental health and makes them an asset to your organization.
4. It also helps you to learn what the employees expect from you.
BY
Kunmun Mishra
Research Scholar (Positive Psychology)
IIT Kharagpur
