Establish a baseline to measure improvements in your organisation’s health, wellbeing and culture.

Fit and healthy employees are happier and more productive. Given that wellness programmes provide 3:1 minimum return on investment, it’s no surprise that organisations large and small are starting to take employee health and wellbeing seriously.

Outcomes from wellness programmes include:

• Increased engagement and satisfaction
• Increased productivity
• Increased discretional effort
• Fewer mistakes
• Lower turnover
• Lower absenteeism

So how do you create a workplace culture that encourages employees to take care of themselves?

• Educate employees about healthy choices: eating, sleeping, smoking cessation, exercise, relaxation, stress management, resilience.
• Mixed media: use a range of methods to communicate wellness messages to your employees.
• Measureable results: ensure you establish measures to monitor the effectiveness of wellness programmes and their return on investment.
• Wellness champions: support and train wellness champions throughout the organisation who will disseminate wellness messages and initiatives.
• Wellness strategy: create a wellbeing strategy with measureable targets.
• Team challenges: team challenges offer a fun way for individuals to support each other’s wellbeing.
• Health assessment: help individuals understand their current health status and areas that could be improved – accompanied with practical advice to improve areas of need.
• Sustain behavioural change: maintain behavioural change by keeping the wellbeing programme alive with new initiatives and rewards.