Are You Doing Enough to Ensure Your Staff Members Are Healthy?

Every business needs a dedicated team in order to operate effectively. Of course, employees are people, and people have their limits. That’s why it’s so important to keep your workers in good physical and mental shape if you want your company to work well. Are you doing enough to ensure your staff members are healthy? If you don’t think so then here are some pieces of advice which might help you out.

Create a Healthy Working Environment

If you want to ensure your staff members are healthy then you should start by creating a healthy working environment. Think about their surroundings. Are they conducive to strong physical and mental wellbeing? The little details really count. For instance, giving your workers ergonomic chairs and keyboards could help to protect their backs and wrists whilst they work. Working in a comfortable environment is important. Make sure you adhere to all safety regulation and that your employees understand the safety regulations too. It’s important not only that you keep them safe but that they keep each other safe.

This should extend beyond meeting health and safety regulations, however. You should also aim to create a healthy working environment by giving your workers the opportunity to look after themselves too. For example, you could create an in-house gym for your employees to use. This would be an incentive for your workers to keep themselves healthy. They might have been deterred from getting a membership at their local gym because it’d cost them a fortune, but if they have facilities that are free to use at work then they won’t really have an excuse to avoid keeping fit.

Make Sure They Take Breaks

It’s important to make sure your staff members take breaks if you want to keep them healthy. They might be keen to get their work done, but they’ll be much more productive if they allow themselves the opportunity to stop and take a breather. After a break, they can return to their desks feeling recharged. You should do the same. Remember, we’re all human; we all need time to relax and unwind. We can’t work constantly. Encourage your workers to go outside and take a walk. You all need to stay healthy.

Set Goals for Yourselves

A great way to ensure your staff members are health is to set goals for yourselves. For instance, you might want to encourage everyone in the office to get a Fitbit. Everybody likes a challenge, and a bit of healthy competition could inspire and motivate your team. You should join in too, of course. Set yourselves the goal of hitting 10,000 steps every day. Anybody who succeeds to do this every day at the end of each week could get a special reward such as a free lunch or perhaps even a bonus. Maybe there could be another reward for whoever did the most steps in an entire week. That’s why you might want to consider using fitness apps to monitor your progress too. You could exercise anywhere with Aaptiv. This app provides plenty of workout routines and allows you to track your steps. The point is that setting goals for yourselves and tracking your achievements will give you all the motivation to stay healthy.

Make It Easy to Eat Healthily

In the hectic world of business, it’s very difficult to eat healthily. We’re all so busy that we might opt for a quick snack from a vending machine rather than a healthy and nutritious lunch. Of course, this isn’t good for us in terms of our health. Ironically, it probably makes workers less productive to “save time” by not eating properly; they’re denying their bodies the necessary sustenance to think and function properly. That’s why you need to make it easy to eat healthily at your workplace if you want to keep your employees happy. The same applies to you too. As the leader of your business, you need to keep yourself healthy so that you can manage your team effectively. You might be a very busy person, but you have to keep yourself well-fed.

You could promote healthy eating by bringing a fruit basket for the office once a week. This would make healthy food options much more accessible, and fruit is a ready-made snack that doesn’t need to be prepared. It’s a much healthier alternative to the processed snacks you find in stores. The goal is to give your workforce (and yourself) easy food options that will actually provide them with the nutrition they need. Perhaps you could create a canteen area with lots of decent food options. Make sure your workers have a lunch break that’s long enough for them to eat a proper lunch. You might think you’re saving time and increasing efficiency by scaling back the time allocated for lunches, but (as explained in the earlier point about breaks) this will actually just make your workplace operate in a less productive manner.

Don’t Neglect Their Mental Wellbeing

We’ve talked a lot about eating healthily and staying fit. Mental health is impacted by both of these things, but it’s also something that needs to be maintained in a direct manner too. Simply eating well isn’t going to magically cure your employees of any stress they might be experiencing, for example. Don’t neglect the mental wellbeing of employees if you want to keep them healthy. Pay attention to their emotional states. Make it very clear that you value the happiness and health of your workers. Keep your door open and ensure your employees understand that they can come and talk to you about any issues they might be having at work. You don’t want your team to feel as if they have to silently suffer through any stress or anxiety they might be having. Regular communication is essential to ensuring that your employees are happy. You don’t want your workers to view you as the disconnected boss figure. Obviously, you have to maintain a position of authority, but don’t make the mistake of equating this to being cold and unavailable. Once you create an open dialogue in your workplace, employees won’t feel afraid to come forward and admit to any problems with their emotional wellbeing. In turn, you’ll be able to help keep your team mentally healthy.