What is Workplace Wellness?
Wellness is that quality that gives us the sense that everything is under control, which in turn allows us to focus fully on what we are doing without distraction from negative stress, disease or conflict.
Workplace wellness is an on-going and holistic undertaking, requiring a manager to consider all aspects of an individual: their personal well being, home life, as well as what they are experience during working hours.
Workplace wellness activities typically fall into three categories:
- Prevention
- Recognition
- Assistance
Why is Workplace Wellness Important?
Progressive employers recognize the importance of employee physical and mental well-being and the benefits.
Although many employers don’t track the financial benefits of their wellness programs, recent Canadian research states that for every dollar spent on a Corporate Wellness Program, the returns have been cost savings of between $2.30 and $10.10 in the areas of decreased absenteeism, fewer sick days, reduced WCB claims, lowered health and insurance costs and improvements to employee performance and productivity.
Statistics also show that a healthy organization increases employee morale, improves the ability to attract and retain key people, all while having more alert and productive employees.
What are some Examples of Workplace Wellness Activities?
There are many different approaches to workplace wellness and many can be offered at little or no cost to the employer or employee. It is best to find areas and topics that are of interest to your staff. Many employers find it beneficial to have a Wellness Committee or a Wellness Champion that takes the initiative to solicit ideas and organize activities of benefit to staff. Some workplace wellness activities that may spark ideas for your funeral home are:
- Friendly challenges among staff to encourage healthy eating
- Offer wellness incentives as rewards and recognition for a job well done
- Start an in-house “Biggest Loser” challenge where groups of employees compete to see which can lose the most weight in a given time period
- Encouraging fitness activities by subsidizing fitness classes
- Organize fitness activities for groups of employees such as walking or yoga
- Encourage smoking cessation through subsidizing or paying for counselling or making information on treatment available to employees
- Serve healthy alternatives at company meetings and lunches
- Promote workplace safety
- Promote information on ergonomic workspaces
- Develop policies to support work-life balance (for example, mandatory vacations, flex- time, set limits or reduce expectations to work and respond to e-mails on personal time)
- Get pedometers for employees to track their steps and create challenges among staff or teams
- Provide first aid and C.P.R. training
- Arrange information sessions such as “lunch and learns” with community professionals on wellness topics of interest to staff
- Install secure bike parking
- Arrange for on-site healthcare such as flu shot clinics, or skin cancer screening
- Provide leaves for childcare, school and other family events
- Provide eldercare and childcare referrals
- Provide career counselling
These are just a few simple ideas on wellness activities that might be of interest. Listed below are additional tools and resources to help plan and implement activities to support a healthy workplace for all your employees.
Tips, tools and resources
Online Information and Ideas
Healthy Workplace Week offers ideas to help celebrate Healthy Workplace Week along with resources that can be used all year round.
Healthy Workplace for Small Organizations This is a 10-point criteria and self-evaluation tool offered by the National Quality Institute (NQI) and designed for organizations with fewer than 100 employees which can be ordered for a small fee. The criteria and review methods are designed to help organizations focus on good practices for workplace health and target specific improvements that are attainable with available resources.
Stairway to Health A Health Canada resource that provides fact sheets, tools, and resources to set up and evaluate a stair-climbing program, as well as information on how to address barriers and make stairways attractive and safe.
Workplace Health Promotion Project provides resources from the Centre for Health Promotion (University of Toronto) which includes:
- Introduction to Comprehensive Workplace Health Promotion;
- Influencing the organization Environment to Create Healthy Workplaces;
- Well-Regarded Initiatives for Workplace Health and Promotion; and
- Comprehensive Workplace Health Promotion: Recommended and Promising Practices for Situational Assessment Tools
HealthU offered by the Alberta Government offers tips and resources to encourage healthy living choices. The site offers ideas and information on starting a workplace wellness program.
Public Health Agency of Canada provides information on workplace wellness and promoting active living at work.
Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace
Guarding Minds @ Work is a free online resource which provides tools and information to measure and create action plans to implement psychological safety and health in the workplace.
