What is one way that you are keeping your employees healthy and productive?

To help you encourage better health and wellness among your employees, we asked business professionals and leaders this question for their insights. From hosting healthy lunches to prioritizing mental health, there are several ways to nurture health and well-being in the workplace.

Here are twelve ways to keep your employees healthy and productive at work:

• Provide a Health and Wellness Stipend
• Encourage Walking Meetings
• Offer Flexible Working Models
• Host Healthy Lunches
• Prevent Health Issues With Gym Access
• Be Adaptive During Cold and Flu Season
• Prioritize Mental Health
• Equip Their Work Area
• Break Up the Day
• Teach Employees Better Posture
• Keep an Eye Out for Burnout
• Encourage Physical Exercise

Provide a Health and Wellness Stipend

As a personal trainer, I know firsthand the importance of battling obesity in our country and the importance of living a healthy lifestyle. This is why we do our best to encourage our employees to exercise and eat healthy. 

We give out a monthly stipend each month for our employees to pay for health and wellness memberships, clubs, and fitness classes. This encourages our employees to exercise and live a healthier lifestyle and avoid problems of obesity that raises the costs of our workforce.

Tyler Read, Personal Trainer Pioneer

Encourage Walking Meetings

For offices that are still meeting in person, we like to have walk-and-talk one-on-one meetings. This encourages us to get up and get exercise while still working. Plus, a lot of great ideas have come from walk-and-talk meetings rather than sitting in a conference room.

Olivia Young, Conscious Items

Offer Flexible Working Models

It’s vital to recognize that employees live very different lives. It is impossible to accommodate all of them with fixed working hours, so it’s a good idea to give employees the right to decide when and where they work. It requires a lot of trust, but it’s definitely worth it. In our experience, after we introduced this idea, our employees have reported higher levels of job satisfaction, and our company productivity has improved.

It’s vital to invest in home office work setups, digital communication tools, online integrations, and every tiny detail that makes employees productive and happy while working from anywhere and at any time. Freedom to choose and manage time yourself is vital for job satisfaction and well-being.

Ewelina Melon, Tidio

Host Healthy Lunches

One way we are addressing the health and wellness of our workforce is supplying healthy lunches to all our employees. This builds positive fundamentals in eating habits and encourages our employees to not only eat a healthy lunch, but also carry this into their other meals as well. 

This promotes healthy eating habits in our employees. This lowers the cost of our workforce and keeps employees healthy so that they can work for us in a more sustainable way.

Jeremy Gardner, MadeMan

Prevent Health Issues With Gym Access

We pay for gym memberships for all of our employees. A gym membership costs between $20-50 USD per month, and it is one of the best investments to make in a person's health.

Having a gym membership encourages our employees to get out and get active, and we've found that our team has more energy and drive as a result of the work they put in in the gym. 

Wesley Jacobs, Apollo Medical Travel LLC

Be Adaptive During Cold and Flu Season

Even if you make every attempt to provide a healthy workplace, many businesses are concerned about how they will meet deadlines and achieve company goals when key employees are absent. During the peak season for colds and flu, your best chance is to provide an extra level of flexibility for both the well-being of your staff and the success of your initiatives. 

This could imply allowing healthy staff to take over a project while someone else is unwell or even extending or restructuring deadlines to accommodate employee ailments. I am convinced that by providing a flexible environment in which no one is overburdened with work due to illness, you will have a lower-stress workplace that will keep your staff happy and healthy.

Edward Mellett, Wikijob

Prioritize Mental Health

One way you can help employees stay healthy and productive is to offer wellness benefits. Many insurance packages include mental health and other wellness programs for employees to utilize as needed. 

These programs may include the ability to speak with a mental health counselor or join a weight loss program for free. These kinds of benefits help employees take care of themselves outside of just their physical health, which is important for keeping them productive while at work.

Nathalie Walton, Expectful

Equip Their Work Area

One way we are keeping our employees healthy and productive is by giving them the best equipment for them to do their job. A nice laptop, ergonomic desk chair, and quality desk give them the ability to do their best work and be the most productive. 

It also keeps them healthy and helps avoid injuries while working at a desk for long periods of time. Keeping our employees healthy is the utmost priority for us and we invest in the best equipment to keep our employees healthy and productive.

John Wu, Gryphon Connect

Break Up the Day

Sometimes, things get pretty busy in the office. It's important to allow employees to take breaks whenever needed. 

After they take a break, they'll have the ability to view their work in a new way. This fresh perspective can allow them to thrive.

Evan Zhao, Revela Health

Teach Employees Better Posture 

One of our ex-colleagues was a trained physiotherapist and she used to give us some fun exercises to do a few times a day while sitting at the office. These were simple exercises  that helped correct wrong posture and prevent injuries in the joints or muscles resulting from excessive hours sitting in the same position.

Once our ex-colleague left to open her own health-at-work company, we designed a small informal booklet with tips and exercises to help all our employees feel comfortable at work. Now every new employee is offered this booklet and encouraged to indulge in its healthy treasures and secrets.

Daniel Torres, PhotoAiD

Keep an Eye Out for Burnout

Rising stress levels can play havoc with an employee's emotional and physical well-being, causing them to experience burnout and lose motivation easily. In times like these, expecting them to be productive is a tall order. 

To manage stress effectively, we prioritize monitoring the stress levels of our employees and do our best to equip them with the best stress management tools. It all starts with creating awareness by holding workshops and virtual webinars. They have been great tools for both our in-office and remote workers to access information that makes their days easier.

Demi Yilmaz, Colonist.io

Encourage Physical Exercise

Taking short breaks can do wonders in giving you a much-needed physical and mental boost, allowing you to effortlessly get back into your workflow with renewed energy. While it's not always possible to jump into action during a break, we do encourage our employees to take up short "at-the-desk" workouts.

These exercises make them mindful of their posture and help them get a bit of stretching into their schedule, avoiding fatigue and injury in the long run.

Chris Thompson, Backdoor Survival