What is a Wellness Program?
A wellness program is an organized and coordinated program that aims to enhance the physical, emotional and mental health risks of a person. Depending on the setting, a wellness program also may promote vocational and spiritual well-being.
Wellness programs typically include activities such as weight loss competitions, exercise, stress management or resilience education, smoking cessation programs, and wellness assessments that are designed to help individuals or employees eat better, lose weight and improve their physical health and physical activity.
A wellness program is a comprehensive health benefits initiative designed to maintain or improve well-being through proper diet, exercise, stress management, and illness prevention.
Workplace wellness programs not only fight the upward trend of unhealthy employees, but also decrease medical care costs and insurance premiums. Employers can provide information in a variety of formats, such as wellness videos, pamphlets, health-related quizzes, and bulletin boards.
According to The American Institute for Preventive Medicine, 91% of today’s organizations have a health care and wellness program, compared to 78% a decade ago. Workplace wellness programs includes incentives to encourage employee participation.
What are the benefits of a Wellness Program ?
Now, workplace wellness programs are common among businesses of all sizes. Companies across the world are offering wellness programs of their own. Today they are a regular part of a company’s benefits package. Workplaces do a great job of improving the health behaviors of employees.To answer this question, we’ve enlisted below the top 10 benefits of a workplace wellness program.
1. Increases Productivity
A study published in a journal found that participating in wellness programs can help improve productivity levels among employees and save money for their employers.
One of the main causes of poor productivity is poor health. When you have poor health, you are tired and feel less motivated to work.
Taking part in wellness activities such as regular exercise increases productivity and performance. Your employees will be better focused and more motivated to complete tasks.
2. Improves Health Behaviors
A successful wellness program can increase healthy food and behaviours such as exercise and decrease unhealthy behaviours such as smoking and alcohol consumption. It helps people to adopt and maintain healthy behaviours.
A health and wellness program will help your employees to learn new healthy habits. It will help them learn to make decisions in life which benefit their health. They will eat healthier foods, exercise regularly, manage stress better, etc.Wellness programs can also help combat depression and improve life satisfaction.
3. Increases Employee Engagement
A company that establishes a wellness culture creates a focused and engaged workforce which sees wellness as benefiting their careers.
Group activities like walking meetings, weight loss challenges, etc. involving healthy eating with healthy snacks, health and fitness challenges will connect your employees more to your company and their fellow employees. As a wellness program engages all the members of a company, they will be able to form new relationships with people.
Also, a workplace wellness program engages and benefits your employees outside of the workplace. This makes them feel that they have a positive impact on other aspects of their lives. Helping them to choose to stay with the company long term.
4. Reduces Stress
We all face workplace stress in our day to day lives. Stress is unhealthy for employees and employers alike. It leads to poor work productivity, poor employee health, and unnecessary sick days.
By offering wellness programs aimed at combating workplace stress, you can improve your employees’ productivity and performance.
Activities like exercise and meditation can help them relieve stress and feel more relaxed.
5. Decreases Absenteeism
A wellness program improves employee health and wellness program impacts if employees are absent from work or not. When employees are healthy and stress-free they are less likely to be absent from work. Also, when employee productivity and morale are high, employees feel motivated to go to work.
6. Better Company Culture
Employee wellness programs have a positive influence on the company culture. A new survey by Virgin HealthMiles Inc. and Workforce Management Magazine found that an overwhelming 77% of employees think that employee wellness programs positively impact the company culture.
This is in part due to the reason that during these programs employees come together and strengthen their relationships, but also because they feel being taken care of by their employer who really cares about them.
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