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Employee wellness has proven to be a make-or-break factor for organizations. As an HR professional or wellness expert, you might be well aware of its impact on the organization. These wellness programs not only play a key role in generating intangible benefits such as enhanced productivity, low employee turnover, efficient goal alignment, etc. but also ensures your employees stay fit and healthy.
In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, I am sure your organization as well is trying to find new ways to ensure the health and wellbeing of the workforce in this new normal. One of the best approaches to execute this is to offer virtual wellness programs to your employees but to succeed, you should know what is important and how to prioritize. Therefore, here is the list of 7 best employee wellness programs you can offer your remote employees:
Recommended Read: – Current and Future Trends in Remote Work for 2022-2025
1. Host Feel-Good Meetings
Your employees are already trying to overcome the challenge of getting used to this new remote work normal. I am sure you might want to take every step possible to make this transition easier for them. Hosting some feel-good meetings will keep employees from feeling isolated and help them stay connected with their co-workers. These emotional connections play a vital role in keeping your employees engaged constantly.
Catch up with the team on a virtual campfire or fun Fridays and hit it off with some fun games and challenges. You can also have a book club gathering or visit a virtual museum together to recreate your outing memories.
2. Create A Health And Wellbeing Club
As an HR personnel or an organization, you should ensure that your employees have access to health resources irrespective of whether they are working from home or at the workplace. You can start with creating a health and wellbeing club through your preferred communication channel such as Teams, Slack, etc. which will enable that the employees stay updated on the events.
Allocate some time for a weekly or monthly catch up and motivate your employees to share their healthy food or workout routine with their colleagues. You can also make it more exciting by offering online Yoga or fitness sessions for the employees to steer up their energy levels!
3. Embrace Flexibility
It is very critical that you have a flexible approach while developing a wellness program for your employees. Streaming health sessions is just one of many tools for engaging remote employees into wellness programs. While emails are the most used communication ways, employees often tend to get lost amidst the work-related emails and miss out on important announcements.
Be flexible and invest in software that allows you to keep track of your employee’s health status. Consider using digital reminders that enable employees to be vigilant regarding their daily schedule. These software will keep them reminding them to take a break, exercise and plan the day well in advance.
4. Offer Counselling Programs
Mental health is often overlooked by a number of organizations. However, it is now important than ever before, as the employees are now working in a remote environment in the absence of their co-workers, with respect to the pandemic. It is natural that sometimes employees may feel left out as they no longer have the privilege to walk up to their colleagues and catch up on a coffee break.
A well-built mental health plan can go a long way in building trust in employees, improving quality of life and wellbeing, keeping them engaged, in turn, making them more efficient at work.
5. Habit-Building Challenges
Healthy habits will not just guide you through creating a healthy work environment but also help in developing a sense of responsibility among the team members. Thinking how is this even possible? Let me unravel this for you. Introduce some fun health challenges to your team and keep track of it with the help of a scorecard. These challenges could be as simple as drinking the right amount of water every day or conducting short warmup sessions for your team!
Just keep in mind that you should not impose multiple activities at once so as to avoid overwhelming the employees.
6. Offer Remote Training
Yes, technology can create wonders with innovative solutions for your organization. But when you add a human touch to it, it becomes even more effective and is likely to be more successful. Organize remote training consultations with well-known dieticians and Yoga experts in the town. Either you can select fitness enthusiasts from each team or assign this function to the health and wellness club members.
These employees can then conduct similar sessions for their teams and ensure that they have the required support and guidance. This way, your employees are not just learning to be trained coaches, but their teams as well will find it easy to reach out, as they already are comfortable and share good rapport with them.
7. Personalize The Experience
Organizations usually are under a misconception that wellness is just about nutritious diet and exercise. Research suggests that 80% of employees feel stressed out at work and look forward to seeking help in order to overcome it. Now, this is where remote counseling comes into the picture again!
However, here you need to ensure that these sessions are exclusive for each employee and are being addressed on the basis of challenges they are facing in their day-to-day life.
Bottom Line:
Each employee has a distinct set of personal goals; similarly, no two cultures are the same. Make sure that you do not overwhelm your employees with multiple challenges. All you need to do is make it fun and engaging. The more fun your wellness programs are, the more fit and healthy your employees stay!
