For the World Health Organization, health encompasses mental, physical, and social well-being. An article on The Lancet expanded the definition to consider the impact of the greater environment, such as climate change.
Workplaces are not perfect, with unexpected long hours, worries over deadlines, missed lunches, stress eating, awkward or hostile interaction, and a constant dread to show up to work among the many things that an employee faces at some point.
The emergence of work-related stress calls for concrete solutions among organizations. Are you an employer or an owner of a business? Here’s how you can take care of your people.
Provide Health-Care Benefits
Health care always affects the quality of life and work. When you have an HMO in place, employees are more at ease to meet their physician for consultations because they don’t have to shell out money from their pockets.
Annual physical assessments and routine checkups serve as preventive measures. Physically healthy employees spend more days at work and are able to do their tasks. You may be eligible for incentives or tax credits when you offer workplace health-care benefits.
Offer Flexibility to Respond to Sudden Life Changes
One of your employees is pregnant or has child-care duties. You can reach an arrangement with the person involved to telecommute or have a flexible schedule and agree on the parameters of the deliverables. Businesses have seen the benefit of providing leeway to their employees who have one less thing to worry about in life or at work. This variability is a common practice among today’s offices.
Set a Clear Process for Promotion
Sometimes, a dead-end job can result in the lack of motivation and productivity and, worse, depression. It will thus put employees’ mind at ease when they know that their efforts will lead to a clearly defined path, a rung on the corporate ladder. Implement a clear-cut promotions program with a defined process that you can draft with your HR personnel and experts. Employees will thus strive toward tangible goals with known outcomes.
Give Opportunities for Continual Growth
Repetitive work makes someone complacent or bored. Training and development fill the need for professional growth and performance. Sign up employees for seminars, workshops, or classes that can teach or enhance the skills relevant to their roles. This way, you won’t have to hire new people to do the job, and you deter turnover as far as the existing employee is concerned.
Maintain a Clean and Neat Office Space
Hire personnel to maintain the tidiness of the office, particularly, to vacuum the carpets, to clean air filters and ducts, and to keep air vents open. Poor or bad indoor air quality can lead to respiratory diseases and infections, which spread quickly in offices. Aside from personal hygiene, it’s often recommended for the affected person to stay at home.
While rest may be adequate treatment in the above case, more severe conditions that impair or affect lung function require ventilators, analyzers, and related instruments. These devices have medical oxygen sensors that measure the concentration of oxygen in breathing gas mixture. Notably, oxygen sensors are also used in workplaces with confined spaces, which refer to openings for a single person to enter and perform particular work.
Involve Everyone in a Wellness Program
A weekly workout, a spa day, or an outdoor activity—ask your team what they do to relax, pool the answers, and let them work out the details for this program. Company-sponsored activities often have lower turnout because members don’t feel involved or are simply not interested. With a more participative approach, you can change this mind-set and make the most of the budget allocated for the said activity.
Serve Free Food
There is such a thing as free lunch. It can be a fancy feast or a stark one. If you go with free food as a perk, you may as well make it healthy and nutritious. Vegetables, fruits, and meats are great options. Snacks like ice cream and yogurt are optional although very much welcome. While free food is not a substitute for other significant benefits, it can be a motivating factor.
Support Mental Health in the Workplace
The company can address this real and serious issue through the wellness program and, more importantly, adopt an open and supportive stance. Workers may feel more comfortable to share their problems or struggles when they perceive the higher-ups to be more understanding about their situation. It’s also critical for HR professionals to undergo training, including handling and managing workplace mental-health issues. HR stands for Human Resources.
Set the Environment for Healthy Interactions
The quality of relationships or the coworkers themselves can make a person stay or quit. While the company has no control over who chooses to be friends or wants to be alone, it can set an example for the tolerance of other people’s beliefs and differences and mete out sanctions for those who have been proven guilty of bullying.
Enforce Drug Testing
This step can be a way to promote a drug-free environment or curb addiction for a safe and healthy workplace. You can require candidates to pass a drug test on the preemployment level. This policy can extend to existing employees as circumstances demand. Employees may become more mindful of their actions in the face of drug-use guidelines, such as undergoing detoxification and giving up the harmful substance.
You have various options for drug testing, such as random testing, postrehabilitation, return to work, and postaccident. In framing your policies, review the relevant state policies on conducting drug tests on the workforce, including those using medical marijuana.
The above list may look to you like a tall order of things you have to accomplish for your employees’ sake. And it’s true; you need to work on the creation and implementation of these programs and keep up with worthwhile trends and developments.
When your workers are happy and healthy, they perform and produce results. They also think twice about leaving their friends or the company that has shown them support when they needed it. Investing in your people and their well-being is a move toward retaining the most qualified and critical to the operations or the overall success of the business.