Did you know that businesses that invest in the welfare of their workers get returns of up to 600%? That is due to the fact that medical and absenteeism expenses decrease for every RM1 invested in an employee’s well-being. The types of health initiatives that produce these kinds of results have a variety of advantages.
Businesses must focus on embedding employee well-being in day-to-day operations, company culture and leadership to see unrivalled results. Programme outcomes won’t be successful if the administration isn’t doing what they preach about “well-being.” This would be a structural barrier that stops the business from investing entirely in employee welfare.
What is a Holistic Wellness Programme?
A holistic wellness programme is designed to help employees develop healthier lifestyles mentally and physically. Traditional wellness initiatives pay attention to an employee’s physical well-being. However, we now know that employee health encompasses more than just physical fitness. Holistic wellness programmes have evolved to reflect that. The way we refer to the agenda has changed the most recently.
The term “holistic” refers to the understanding of the intricate relationships between individual pieces of a whole that cannot be disregarded. In a medical context, this refers to taking into account all potential social, psychological, and emotional influences on a person’s health. Holistic wellness programmes now include means of fostering physical fitness, wholesome eating, mental health, spiritual satisfaction, stress reduction, financial health and much more. The goal is to provide support and the chance to establish healthy habits in every area of our life.
Following particular daily practices to improve your physical and mental health is the essence of wellness. Work-life wellness is when companies adopt a wellness programme to assist their staff in living the healthiest lives possible. It is, in many respects, the transition from merely existing to flourishing. For wellness programmes, there are eight essential things to take into account according to Engage Life. Each of the eight pillars is related to the others and must be considered. Your overall plan will only be balanced if you give each equal time. These are the six pillars:
- Social
As social beings, our social welfare is essential to our general health. This is centred on establishing and keeping connections and showing compassion for others.
- Environmental
Our houses ought to be our haven. This pillar aims to make our homes a secure place to unwind and conduct business. It also promotes interaction with nature and also creating an enjoyable personal environment (both in and out of your workspace).
- Spiritual
Finding purpose in life requires having a healthy spiritual life. This can be accomplished through organised religion, but you can also concentrate on specific pursuits that give you access to your inner spirituality.
- Physical
The most concentrated wellness pillar is frequently this one. This keeps our bodies in peak condition to withstand life’s problems.
- Organisational
services to help your organization create the conditions where employees give their best to the company – and the company gives its best to its people.
- Mental
Positive mental health and wellbeing enables you to function well, have meaningful social connections, positive self-esteem and be better able to cope with life’s ups and downs. Keeping our mind healthy is an important part of our overall health and wellbeing.
Corporate Holistic Wellness Programme Examples
As many of these elements as feasible will be addressed through a comprehensive and holistic approach to wellbeing. Depending on the requirements of your workforce, holistic wellness enables you to be creative with the kind of services and perks you offer. Here are some ideas to get you going.
- Encouragement for Taking Time Off
A vacation from work might give you a tremendous mental boost or the breathing room you need when taking care of elderly relatives. But it might be challenging to convince some workers to take some well-earned time off. To set a positive example for the rest of the team that vacation time is something you want people to take. Additionally, it allows employees to mature and progress as they manage situations without your presence!
- Restoration Period
Taking a break at work once indicated that an individual was not committed to their tasks or hard-working. There is now recognition that a five-minute mindfulness break may increase your employees’ productivity by lowering stress. Support for rest and breaks doesn’t need posh nap rooms; all that’s required is an understanding that workers aren’t dodging work when they’re dozing off at their desks.
- Volunteer Opportunities
People will feel better about themselves if they give back to their communities and connect with others. This positive sensation can be enhanced by charitable volunteering. Forty hours of paid time are allotted to employees each year to volunteer for non-profits.
- Remote Employment
Workplaces nowadays are a lot more adaptable and customised because of technology. Additionally, modern workers want greater flexibility. According to a recent FlexJobs poll, 54% of millennials prefer to work a flexible or alternate schedule.
- Financial Advice
Even if workers eat healthily and exercise regularly, money stress can harm wellbeing. Financial counselling programmes are expected to grow in popularity over the following years because it is beneficial to assist employees in managing their finances.
The Benefits of a Holistic Wellness Programme
A Holistic Wellness Programme may provide the workplace with many advantages the whole year regarding happy and healthy workers.
- Higher Productivity
The benefits a workplace may experience from increased productivity are endless. Efficiency increases an employee’s capacity to take on additional work without feeling overburdened or exhausted. Who wouldn’t want it as an employer?
Businesses that can take on extra work frequently reap various advantages that boost their earnings. They now enjoy more profits, corporate expansion, less difficulty satisfying customer demand, and more robust industry competition—all by providing their staff with more excellent care.
- Better Employee Attitudes
Unhappy workers are those who are ill. A holistic approach to workplace wellness may address these issues because exercise, food, and general health all significantly impact mental and emotional well-being. Employees’ performance in all aspects of their job improves when they have better attitudes in general. They are more attentive and productive, produce better work, and interact better with co-workers and clients.
Employees with positive attitudes also exhibit higher performance under pressure and more vital critical thinking abilities, all of which are essential in the daily operations of an office. Better attitudes allow people to transform difficult situations into opportunities. This sort of situational response can be the difference between success and failure when issues with customers or projects develop. Offering wellness programmes is an outstanding down payment on improving employees’ attitudes and enhancing a company’s performance.
- Increased bonding among co-workers
Relationships have a lot of power; always pay attention to them. Employees are more likely to develop a supportive work environment that fosters well-being when they feel more “in touch” with their co-workers. In addition to receiving exercise and fresh air, which improve general well-being, corporate teams gather to participate in team-building activities and strengthen their bonds.
Employees that interact more as friends rather than co-workers at the office get along better. They foster a sense of corporate pride, push each other to develop their ideas further and keep one another accountable for their job. For people to succeed in their roles, the workplace has to have a robust support system.
- Higher Performance Levels in the Office
When ill, regardless of whether it’s a bodily condition like a cold or the flu or a mental one like being extremely sleepy or anxious, no one performs as well as they typically would. To avoid diseases that often affect offices, regular checkups at the doctor’s office and prophylactic measures like a seasonal flu vaccination can be beneficial. However, there are situations when the impact of mental well-being on worker performance can be much more detrimental.
Employees’ performance will suffer if they get exhausted, pressured, or overburdened. It is more crucial now than ever to address these concerns at work because several studies demonstrate that work is the overwhelming primary cause of stress for most Americans. Regularly allowing employees to decompress will keep them engaged and constantly producing at high levels.
- A Happier Workplace
All businesses want to have happy, productive workers since that is what makes them successful. Employers will experience advantages by implementing business wellness initiatives, such as offering nutritious food in the office and scheduling time for enjoyable team-building activities. These benefits will only grow with time.
There is no restriction on the kinds of wellness initiatives businesses can implement. Wellness can take many forms, and the more innovative employers are with their offerings, the more engaged employees will be, and the more benefits companies can expect over time. These wellness-related activities include accountability groups, exercise “clubs,” gym memberships, regularly scheduled retreats, and enjoyable activities.
How to Get Started With a Holistic Wellness Programme for Your Employees
Step 1: Conduct Evaluations
A crucial first step in creating a holistic wellness programme is learning about the health of the employee and the organisation’s readiness to make changes in response to this knowledge. The employer gathers information accordingly to create programmes and services that will be most advantageous to both the company and the employee.
Step 2: Obtain Management Support
Building a successful wellness programme requires the support of management. As with any effort, getting management support is essential for gaining funds, winning over the company, and establishing the programme’s policies and procedures. By assisting in the connection between health promotion goals and business outcomes, management may further aid in establishing wellness as an integral part of the company.
Step 3: Establish A Wellness Committee
An employer can establish an internal, employee-driven committee that aids in establishing and sustaining a wellness culture in the company after performing a needs assessment and getting management support. This group will contribute to increasing the wellness programme’s organisational support and effectiveness. The wellness committee may be in charge of the following duties:
- Assessing the programmes, services, and policies currently in place at work.
- Evaluating the requirements and preferences of employees.
- Creating a health promotion operations plan, including goals, objectives, and a vision statement.
- Helping to implement, oversee, and assess wellness programmes.
Step 4: Develop Goals and Objectives
Employers can set goals and objectives for the programme using the data from the employee evaluation. An important aim for many companies is to raise employee wellness and, as a result, lower healthcare expenditures. Other purposes can be to decrease absenteeism, increase productivity, and improve employee retention. The overall, long-term results expected from the wellness programme are stated in the aims and objectives of the programme. Every goal contains one or more targets to ensure it will be completed. Clear, time-bound, and briefly stated objectives make assessing if they have been met.
Step 5: Establish a Budget
A crucial first step in developing the holistic wellness programme is setting up a budget. Without money, the initiative will come to a halt. Organisations should include the cost of incentives, promotion, and programme design when establishing a wellness budget. Fees for the screening vendor or other supplier, participant incentives, advertising materials, meeting expenses, pedometers or other fitness trackers, HR representative and committee member time are typical budget items.
Step 6: Design Wellness Programme Components
The employer may hire an outsource or corporate wellness programme provider to design a wellness programme with a lot of flexibility according to your company. Engage Life can customise standard programmes for you because each will differ depending on the requirements and resources of the organisation.
A wellness programme is straightforward or complex and multifaceted. It is crucial to incorporate a range of elements that focus on risky behaviours as well as the requirements and interests of the employees. The sort of wellness programmes to include in the design may be decided by organisations using the resources acquired during earlier organisational assessment processes, data gathered by wellness committees, financial restrictions, and goals and objectives.
Step 7: Evaluate the Success of The Programme
Evaluating the wellness programme’s success is crucial for maintaining management and staff support and amending or launching new programmes. This is true of any investment or initiative. At the launch of any wellness effort, employers should have pre-determined KPIs and baselines, which will vary based on the programmes adopted. Employers could track participation rates, programme completion rates, healthcare cost savings, and the proportion of staff members who gave up smoking or lost weight.
Additionally, employers may want to evaluate the ROI. The evaluation of the wellness programme’s efficacy is a crucial stage in the continuous administration of the programme, regardless of the methodologies or metrics utilised.
Get Started With Engage Life Holistic Wellness Programme for Your Employees
Engage Life is the industry leader in wellness engagement solutions with customised programmes. A supportive network of experts to support them gives employees the power to take charge of their physical and mental health. Engage Life’s unique whole-person approach integrates and motivates, incorporating its tried-and-true system for introducing team members to their co-workers and material. Engage Life helps the entire employee, wherever they are, to maintain physical fitness, eat better, sleep better, take care of their mental health, and reduce financial stress. Trust Engage Life’s cutting-edge, cost-effective solution to help you to create happier, healthier, and more resilient workplaces.
