Companies are now discovering that happier employees produce better business. Let’s face it, employees are the backbone of every successful company. Statistics show that healthier employees, not only have better productivity, but they also directly affect the company’s bottom line. According to the Institute for HealthCare Consumerism, 28 percent of employees state that they would feel more loyal towards employers who offered healthcare and lifestyle improvements. While the evidence is clear that healthy employees can make for a well-run business, what isn’t so clear is how to motivate employees into caring about their health. One way to do this is by implementing wearable health technology. Most people understand that health is important, …show more content…
Whatever team or individual has made the most steps by the deadline, will get the awesome reward. • Weight Loss Challenge: This is pretty direct and to the point. But create a challenge for most weight lost. By the end of the challenge, your employees will be not only healthier because of the weight loss, but they’ll have even more energy to work, as a result. • Meditation Challenge: Stress is one of the biggest factors in affecting workplace behavior. A great way to eliminate stress is through meditation. Have employees commit to a certain amount of meditation each day. The individual or group who has amassed the amount of minutes in meditation is the winner, and a lot less stress free! Time to Get Social The main thing about these challenges is you want to boost employee engagement. Sure, you keep things ultra private and personal, but getting social is a whole lot more fun! Have your employees utilize various social media platforms along the way of these challenges. Encourage employees to post photos and text within their wellness apps. It’s also the perfect place to organize team meetings about the challenges. Employees can discuss team health activities that they would like to plan such as weekend hikes, or healthy potlucks they’d like to
This is an essay written in the MIT Sloan Management Review that presents the correlation between businesses and the issue of obesity in order to persuade businesses to take action in regards to preventing the issue. Therefore, its target audience is anyone who currently works in business or plans to do so in the future. In this review, the author begins by citing four internal and external reasons for which businesses should care about obesity: self-preservation, public criticism, employee productivity, and opportunity. The author proceeds by providing an idea as to how businesses can assist in reversing the trend. In order to do so, he analyzes what he considers to be the two sides of the obesity problem: physical activity and food consumption.
Employee wellness programs, also known as a “worksite wellness program”, are programs that are designed to promote and support the health, safety, and well being of a company’s employees. Wellness programs are meant to improve the health of the staff, their morale, and in turn also help improve their productivity. There are many components that make up employee wellness programs, for example; Health Screenings, Health Fairs, Fitness classes, Smoking cessation classes, and even wellness issue workshops. Employers have begun adopting these programs in hopes of helping their employees while they are at an age when health interventions can still help transform their long-term health choice. This paper will focus on trends found between employee weight and productivity, and the impacts these could have on a business overall.
As a large sedentary community, the Mid Atlantic Consolidated Patient Accounts Center (MACPAC) has a great need to promote exercise and healthy eating habits in the workplace. Currently more than one-third of the country suffers from obesity. It is my hope that with the help of the Wellness Committee we can continue to improve healthy lifestyle changes, and curb the epidemic of obesity that our country has. I am currently finishing my Masters in Public Health, and need to do a service project for the community. It is my hope that the MACPAC will be a place where we can start this change from sedentary lifestyles, to a more healthy and active
This is a really good thing because it is there to educate people on how to be healthier. They offer the staff not only classes to attend, but seminars as well. Personal wellness is all about being healthy. I also believe that it goes hand in hand with physical wellness. For this part, I would like to implement a link on their page that leads them to My Fitness Pal in order to help them log in their food intake. I believe that this would help them track what their dietary intake looks like and also keep them on the right track. I would also look into hiring a professional nutritionist on board who is also an expert in fitness. This would be a huge benefit for those who work on campus. They would have advice from a professional who can help them get to where they need to be. Another thing I found online that I thought was a great idea was to eliminate all sugary snacks and drinks on campus and offer healthy snacks instead. This would help reduce temptation and teach the staff to eat a bit healthier as
How to keep it going strong? As previously noted, determining employees’ expectations and promoting programs can help create a more positive perception of the organization and that is important. Therefore, once the assessments have been completed to supply the base line data, employees’ needs and wants have been determined, and the leadership support needed is where it should be, one can almost “jump in” with the activity with an exception of one final item – assessment of readiness of the employees to change. If the assessments used in designing the wellness initiatives contained questions regarding this topic, this information will be at hand. However, it is important to note that employees may move back and forth in the stages of readiness. The employee needs to be “met where he is” and even small steps towards healthier lifestyles need to be encouraged (Kotter, 1996; Lowe, 2004). Additionally, communication is very important and it will be described a little bit later in this paper under its own heading.
Thank you for the opportunity to share more about HealthyWage and our challenges. We work hand in hand with Weight Watchers; they actually take advantage of our challenges and run them internally. HealthyWage is working directly with Weight Watchers so that it is an integrated promotion of weight management programming. You can run our challenges in parallel to other challenges that you may have in place. In addition, HealthyWage can be a great marketing vehicle to make your participants aware of all the resources they have available through your health plan and wellness program to help them lose weight. Accordingly, HealthyWage results in huge engagement by employees, (most Ceo’s participate), and results in huge behavior change.
Employees of The Fit Stop are responsible for assisting customers that may be extreme physical pain. There are some intrinsic rewards attached to being an employee at The Fit Stop, as employees are able to see the benefits their position is offering customers. Although this is a great reward, this isn’t necessarily enough to motivate employees to learn about all of the pieces of equipment or attempt to sell as many pieces of equipment as possible.
The everyday health and fitness individual has the availability to track running, walking, sleeping, daily movement, and lets you set goals and challenge previous records. This group of individuals accounts for 128 million possible sales and are going to be in the best shape of their lives to take advantage of the fitness capabilities the Apple Watch has to offer. These active tech savvy students or business individuals can dress the watch up or down, and still keep track of fitness goals. The available apps for the Watch will help individuals keep notes, update events in personal calendars, check stocks, pay with Apple Pay, send and receive emails, and improve efficiency of tasks throughout the day while working out (Apple: The Watch Reimagined,
With the health care costs reaching high number there is no wonder we have a large number of absenteeism. So many wait to the last possible painstaking work day to decide to see a doctor about their aliment, and all of that could be prevented. Preventing oneself to have to take time off from work is one way to keep costs low. There are so many areas that need to be addressed when it comes to what is going to slow us down as a company. According to estimates by Dr. Jaime Claudio(1991), a corporate wellness consultant for Health Plus, a provider of health-care insurance, a comprehensive eating awareness and weight- management program designed to improve long-term habits could generate an 80% reduction in the incidence of potential problems caused by obesity in the workplace. These problems include hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease, and diminished work efficiency. Obesity is not the only eating disorder that is a problem, there is bulimia and anorexia. Smoking, drinking, substance abuse, and stress are problems that are brought into the workplace and stop productivity. We have to be aware of issues that are there but are not usually thought of as an illness.
Introduction In Mindfulness, Ellen Langer presents her research on mindfulness and mindlessness in work, health, interpersonal relationships, and everyday living. Mindful qualities include the ability to create new categories, openness to new information, awareness of more than one perspective, attention to process rather than outcome and control over context. Mindfully considering things in new and thought-provoking ways can seem difficult but it leads to an “exhilarating, never tiring” control of our own thinking (Langer, 1989, pg. 137). Mindfulness can lead to several benefits including increased “flexibility, productivity, innovation, leadership ability, and satisfaction” (Langer, 1989, pg. 133).
Methodology: The collection data primary and secondary sources were used. For primary data, some interviews were conducted with employees so that a detailed overview of the programs can be analyzed. Whereas, most of the work is based on secondary research for which the relevant websites of the companies, books, and journal articles were consulted. Identification of the most appropriate wellness plan
The second company that I will cover is General Mills, they do not have as intense a program as General Electric but they have a very well rounded health and wellness program that I believe Norfolk Southern could take an example from. General Mills has a screening tool, a computerized self-assessment that “helps employees identify health risks, motivate healthy lifestyle changes, and learn about health and wellness resources” (Workplace Wellness).
Ensuring the health and safety of employees is of primary importance to the Organization. Organization is committed to maintaining safe facilities, sponsoring appropriate training programs, and providing necessary safety equipment. In addition, Administration and staff shall cooperatively develop appropriate procedures and regulations for ensuring employees' health and safety, with special emphasis on the handling of potentially hazardous equipment or substances and for investigating and reporting any accidents and mishaps. All newly employed staff shall be required to comply with the physical examination. Every employee must provide annually, at a minimum, an updated health history of current health problems.
Be Healthy & Alive will be a10 week program which will accept 15 adult participants, who are willing to dedicate themselves into a healthier atmosphere. The participants must show willingness to change old behaviors, and accept constructive criticism from staff. The program will be held Monday-Thursday from 5-7:30pm. There will be various lessons covered, just to name a few: physical activity 101, first steps to changing a bad behavior, benefits of physical activity and so much more. There will be a total of 5 personal trainers (colleagues) who have volunteer their time to serve the participants in the
Another large debate in the issues and impacts of obesity is the responsibility of employer’s. Especially for those whose obesity comes from a sedentary lifestyle. Or perhaps need the preventative measures of keeping obesity at bay. A hot topic on the rise is whether or not employers should be mandated to give employees a work-out period in their schedule. The employers could offer employee’s incentives for utilizing resources (a company gym, discounted memberships, and dietician, walking a company track) and by using the resources keep costs low. Though initially it could be costly to take on the responsibility to offer extra incentives to employee’s it could offer long term potential savings. (Villareal, Apovian, Kushner, and Klein 2005) Those whose companies offer various programs and actively engage in them express more happiness, productivity, a greater quality of life, and overall better health. Better health allows for employee’s to serve their employers better. They use less sick pay, keep insurance premiums low, and are more likely to be in tune with their daily job. So while the initial cost may be high, the long term financial gain of a happy, healthy, productive team is hard not to invest in!