5 Employee Wellness Trends for 2020

5 Employee Wellness Trends for 2020

Organisations are beginning to understand the direct connection between employee health and wellness and business performance. But the definition of employee wellness, or wellbeing, has evolved dramatically over the past few years, and corporate wellness programs must adapt to changes in society. Source Here are 5 new trends in employee wellbeing and corporate wellness programs:   1) Employee wellness programs are about more than just physical health.  What began as a focus on counting steps, tracking sleep, and logging water intake has expanded to include social and emotional—or mental—health. This means taking a more holistic view of employee wellbeing. Rather than just considering physical fitness, best-in-class corporate wellbeing programs now prioritise […]

10 Data Based Benefits of Employee Wellness Programs You Need to Know About

10 Data Based Benefits of Employee Wellness Programs You Need to Know About

Employee wellness programs seem to offer obvious benefits. There’s general well-being of course, plus health, happiness…and the pursuit of more happiness? In other words, it can be surprisingly hard to articulate any concrete benefits of employee wellness programs, especially from a business standpoint. However, that’s exactly what you need to do if you want to make a solid case for a program you’ve been thinking about implementing. Source Fail to make a solid argument as an HR Professional, and your proposal to key decision makers could merit responses like these: “Sure, wellness programs for employees looks fun and sounds like a good idea, but do they really offer any benefits?” “Wellness programs don’t […]

How Toxic Is Your Workplace Exactly? Quite Toxic If These 6 Things Keep Showing Up – Inc.

How Toxic Is Your Workplace Exactly? Quite Toxic If These 6 Things Keep Showing Up – Inc.

How toxic is the workplace-maybe even yours? In Dying for a Paycheck, Stanford professor of organizational behaviour Jeffrey Pfeffer documents loads of evidence suggesting that the workplace is literally killing people. Sixty one % of employees said that workplace stress had made them sick and 7% said they had actually been hospitalized. Job stress, according to Pfeffer, may cause 120,000 excess deaths each year.  Source: Inc. I’ve documented toxicity in the workplace as well, with head-shaking statistics. To raise awareness of the profundity of the problem in hopes of safeguarding our children’s future when they enter the workplace, I offer you six commonly found toxic behaviours. 1. Passive aggressiveness. Research has discovered that most toxic […]

Employers Need to Recognize That Our Wellness Starts at Work – HBR

Employers Need to Recognize That Our Wellness Starts at Work – HBR

The current debate about workplace wellness has called into question virtually every aspect of wellness programs. Commentators have railed against them, with some asserting that they are not only worthless but are also a morale disaster and a stealthy way to shift more coverage costs onto employees. Source: Harvard Business Review Despite all this, most corporate leaders continue to fund such programs. Collectively, employers spend upward of $8 billion a year on wellness programs — yet the programs underperform by most measures, and barely 25% of employers even try to understand how well their programs do. This disconnect between the near unanimous adoption of workplace wellness programs and their demonstrably apathetic results leads to some fundamental questions. Is the workplace […]

The Pillars of an Effective Workplace Wellness Program via HBR

The Pillars of an Effective Workplace Wellness Program via HBR

Strategically integrated wellness programs have six strong pillars that simultaneously support their success, regardless of the size of the organization. Construct them well, and your institution could see the kinds of big returns that the 10 companies in our sample have garnered. Source: Harvard Business Review 1. Multilevel Leadership Creating a culture of health takes passionate, persistent, and persuasive leadership at all levels—from the C-suite to middle managers to the people who have “wellness” in their job descriptions. It’s easy to find employees who don’t participate in wellness programs. Some cite lack of time, little perceived benefit, or just a distaste for exercise. Others don’t know about available services or blame […]

A 3-Step Approach to Handle Flu Season @ Work

A 3-Step Approach to Handle Flu Season @ Work

The winter season in Greece has began and its marking its way with symptoms of cold and flu. Here’s how to keep your workplace healthy — or fight back when something ends up going around. Source: Inc Along with the rain and the cold, the change in time and the sorter day, your employees are probably inadvertently tracking plenty of germs into the office. That’s nasty for them and nasty for you — sick employees are (contagious) unproductive employees. You can’t make it warmer in November so what, if anything, can be done to keep your workplace as healthy as possible?Here is a sensible approach to three key areas. Prevention The […]

Is a Workplace Massage Program Right for your Office?

Is a Workplace Massage Program Right for your Office?

There is a lot to consider when answering this question. And though there may be a lot of reasons to move forward with a program like this, there are also some real things to evaluate to make sure that it’s a good fit for your corporate culture, your budget, and business.   Source 4 Reasons a Workplace Massage Program Would Not Be a Good Fit 1. Make sure you have room to grow the massage program. Along the lines of the point listed above, if you have a set budget and the program grows in popularity (which it always does) or your company is in growth mode, you might find that […]

Making Your Company Wellness Program Work

Making Your Company Wellness Program Work

Lately, there’s been some debate about whether workplace health promotion programs, more commonly known as wellness programs, work. To us, it’s similar to asking whether reviews, training programs, employee assistance services, or other company initiatives are effective for both worker performance and the bottom line. The honest answer is that some are successful while others fail. And most of the time this comes down to how they’re designed and executed. Source: Harvard Business Review So how do you create an evidence-based health promotion program that does work? And what can employers do to avoid common pitfalls that lead to ineffective and, in worse case scenarios, harmful initiatives? To tackle these questions, […]

The 6 Habits of Highly Effective HR Professionals

The 6 Habits of Highly Effective HR Professionals

HR is in the midst of a paradigm shift. Smart companies know that in our modern service and information economies, people are actually our most valuable assets. As such, HR has taken on an increasingly front-line, strategic function, and is as important as finance, sales, marketing, or operations. So what does this mean for today’s crop of HR professionals? Source To put it bluntly, your job is harder than ever. Not only are you expected have to have a solid foundation in the traditional areas of HR expertise, but you have a whole new set of skills and responsibilities to master, and a whole host of additional considerations. Now you […]

Creating a Workplace Culture People Love

Creating a Workplace Culture People Love

Improving workplace culture is a thorny issue for most business leaders. It’s something that they probably know is important, but can’t quite get a handle on. Finance, strategy, product development, operations – those are the tangible, measurable elements of their business. But Culture? That’s the definition of the “soft stuff,” the stuff they probably skimmed over in business school, the stuff that makes their eyes glaze over whenever speakers bring it up at conferences. Source However, more and more leaders are learning it’s no coincidence that the biggest, best, and most innovative companies also happen to have great cultures. In fact, so often these companies are great precisely because they have […]