Improve Wellness For You And Your Employees: 11 Ways!

If you don’t know how to improve personal wellness around you, you won’t have happy, healthy employees, or much of a business. Yes, when you improve wellness it can boost your business!

It has been shown time and time again that employees who are well are much more productive, creative, and loyal than those who are unwell or unhappy with their lot, which is hardly a surprise.

how to improve personal wellness

Improve Wellness

So, as well as being the right thing to do, it makes total sense that you should invest a not-insignificant amount of time, money, and effort into the wellness of your employees.

The more you can improve their well-being, the more they will give back to your business, and any measures you implement will soon pay for themselves.

Okay, but how exactly do you improve employee wellness in your business? Here are a few key places to start:

1. Show Them You Care

One of the easiest ways to improve the mental and emotional well-being of your employees is to show them that they are more than just cogs in a machine. Employees like to feel valued. When they feel valued, their job becomes more than just something they are forced to do to earn money.

It becomes a vocation, it becomes a satisfying and important part of their life and this will almost certainly help to boost their productivity, lower their stress, and lead to fewer sick days.

But, how exactly do you show your staff that you care?

Listening to them is a good place to start. Truly take notice of their suggestions, problems, and even their personal life, and implement changes based on what they are telling you. If they feel truly listened to, they will know that their well-being is important to them, and that can only be a good thing.

2. Reward Them

Rewarding employees for their hard work is another way of showing them that you care, but it is more than that – it is a way of boosting their confidence.

Confident employees are far less likely to succumb to the stresses and strains of daily working life than those who are second-guessing every decision and worrying about whether they can do the job right.

So, whether you buy them pizza every Friday to reward their effort during the week or pay them an annual bonus for getting that project in on time and within budget, always look for ways to reward your employees.

In addition, you could set up some goals for them to complete for further rewards! Having goals is a great way to increase mental stimulus as well.

reward them to improve wellness

3. Use Positive Language to Improve Wellness

This is often a lot more difficult to do than it sounds, but if you, and all of your team, can make a real effort to use positive, rather than negative language in your business interactions, it will make a world of difference to the mental well-being of your employees.

Affirming language has been shown to lead to more successful outcomes, and it tends not to upset people or make them feel like they are failing. So by couching all of your languages in positive terms, even when you’re talking about more negative aspects of your business, you can kill two birds with one stone.

Hence, this will boost employee well-being while also building a far stronger business.

4. Introduce a Mindfulness Practice

Mindfulness isn’t just for Buddhist monks or hippie-dippy types, these days more and more often, mindfulness is being used in corporate settings and it has been helping to transform the lives of frazzled employees everywhere.

What is mindfulness? It’s the process of focusing your body and mind firmly in the present moment no matter what you are doing. How does it help?

By placing the emphasis squarely on the now, mindfulness can stop employees from ruminating on past mistakes or worrying about future outcomes that may or may not ever come to pass, It gives them the headspace they need to truly focus on the task at hand.

This results not only in better working outcomes, greater productivity, and more focus but also in better mental health, which is really important right now.

5. Keep Them Safe To Improve Wellness

Employee safety is an aspect of running a business that is often overlooked above and beyond ensuring that the legal requirements of the company are adhered to.

However, it really shouldn’t be because employees who feel safe and secure in the workplace are likely to be happier and more productive.

That’s why you cannot understate, for example, the importance of installing cell phone signal boosters in parking structures, so that employees can call for help should they need it. Nor, why you should neglect to set up security cameras around the perimeter of the building, amongst other things. The safer your employees feel, the better it will be for you all.

6. Offer a Great Healthcare Package

If you’re serious about improving the well-being of your employees, you really do need to offer them a decent healthcare package.

The last thing you want is for your employees to be coming to work every day getting sicker and sicker just because they can’t afford to have their medical problems sorted out in a timely manner.

Not only will this cost you more in lost productivity and poorer work outcomes, not to mention sick days, but it will also not show your company in the best light, nor will it encourage the very best candidates to come and work for you.

7. Be Generous With Time Off

Speaking of sick days, if you really want to improve employee well-being, you should aim to not be one of those companies that go in hard on anyone who needs to take a sick day or who actively encourages people to come in no matter how sick.

After all, it can totally sink employee morale, and for what?

Sick employees are hardly going to do their best work, and if they’re contagious, they could even end up passing it on and taking out more of your team.

I learned this hard way many years ago when I worked in the corporate world. One day, I got very sick (from Lyme disease) at the event of a fancy business meeting and my manager had to drive an hour to bring me home and then drive another hour back to the event. I felt so bad for wasting other people’s time that day. From that day on if I felt sick, I called out sick. (Even if I ran out of paid sick time.)

If, on the other hand, you’re generous with your sickness policy, you’ll earn more respect, and your employees will feel happier working for you.

And as a result, they’ll be more loyal to your company, less likely to fake sickness when they feel like a day off, and much more likely to recommend you as an employee to others. What’s not to like?

8. Encourage Exercise To Improve Personal Wellness

Fit employees are productive employees. Hence, fit employees take fewer sick days. And, fit employees tend to be more focused and creative. That’s why it makes perfect sense for you, as a business owner, to do everything you can to encourage your employees to exercise regularly and stay fit. If you can improve wellness in your business, it will help it grow.

There are a number of ways you can do this from offering subsidized gym memberships or classes to paying for a personal trainer to come into the office twice a week and put them through their paces.

If you set up fitness challenges, chances are you’ll appeal to their competitive nature and increase participation but if an employee doesn’t want to take part, don’t pressure them because that could cause more harm than good.

9. Let Them Work from Home More Often

Working from home isn’t for everyone, but some people love it, and not only does it boost their mental happiness, but it also enables them to be more productive.

Then, some people would mostly prefer to work in the office. But for whom it would occasionally suit to work from home, perhaps because of childcare issues or similar, who will much appreciate the option.

Homeworkers have been shown to be just as, if not more, productive than those who attend the workplace, so really, if you can offer remote working as an option, even occasionally, you have nothing to lose by doing so.

10. Support Team Building to Improve Wellness

Team building activities may make a lot of people roll their eyes, and a lot of people dread them, but that’s usually because they take no account of what employees would actually like to do together,

If you focus on the personalities of your team and choose a team-building activity that won’t fill them with dread, it can be a really great way of fostering meaningful relationships between staff. Thus allowing them to have a good time together.

It’s a great way to show how to improve personal wellness.

team building to improve wellness

This is important because it fosters friendship and understanding. This friendship helps to stamp out bullying and other upsetting practices that could harm well-being in the workplace.

It also helps staff to identify strengths and weaknesses so they can better support each other through each working day.

11. Keep Improving To Improve Personal Wellness

Implementing the above ideas is a great way to improve your employee wellness, but it is not the whole answer, and by continuously monitoring employee wellbeing, you will be able to identify ever more ways of helping them to be the happiest, healthiest versions of themselves they can be while working for you.

As an employer, you have a duty to your staff, and your work is never done. So don’t get complacent or let things slide.

Make employee well-being a priority and do everything you can to keep it that way now and forever. Your employees and your business will thank you for it.

Your Turn: How To Improve Personal Wellness

How are you improving your personal wellness for your business? Do you take care of your health? And does it differ as you are working from home more?

I’d love to know more in the comments below about how you improve wellness for yourself and your team.

Lisa Sicard

13 thoughts on “Improve Wellness For You And Your Employees: 11 Ways!”

  1. I run a multi-author blog. We are a startup so 6 through 9 don’t really apply at present but I love the general perspective of this list. Fostering mindfulness among staff is pretty cool and novel, to me at least, though no doubt it becomes difficult when you are dealing with deadlines.

    1. Hi Al, you really need mindfulness with deadlines. I worked in the newspaper business for 30 years and dealt with daily deadlines. They sure can be stressful. I sometimes forget now that I still set my own deadlines for everything. I try to slow down, do yoga and go for walks before tackling big projects. It often helps! Thanks for coming by and have a great day! Welcome to Inspire To Thrive 🙂

  2. Hello Lisa,

    A company is definitely growing from its manpower that is their employee. If a company provides everything to its employee then I believe that it helps the company to grow much faster than others. Coordinating and communication are very important things here. You have mentioned each and every aspect of it. Great Job

    Regards,
    Vishwajeet Kumar

    1. Hi Vishwajeet, thank you. Nice to see you back here 🙂 It does take a lot of coordination and communication. I appreciate your feedback and for stopping by. Make it a great day there!

  3. Hello Lisa,

    I printed out this page so that I will remember all of the great ideas listed. I want to push for Team Building!!!

    Thank you for these ideas! Really Great Article!

    Regards
    Mohit Bhargav

    1. Hi Mohit, welcome to Inspire To Thrive. I’m glad to hear you really liked this page to print it out. You are most welcome. I hope you have a great day and new week and a new Month. Hard to believe we are in February today!

  4. Being mindful has a profound effect on overall wellness Lisa. People think of monks, saints or enlightened souls when pondering mindfulness. Turns out, every human being benefits from mindfully going about their day. Little stress to no stress arises if you keep to the moment, boosting happiness, peace of mind and overall employee wellness. Super post.

    1. Hi Ryan, That is for sure. I need to really work on my mindfulness. I bet you could teach classes Ryan in that and sell them on DVD’s or online. I’d be a student for sure! Thanks for coming by and enjoy your weekend.

  5. Hello Lisa,

    Great content, as always! I have read many of your articles. This is again a great read for me.

    I totally admit that improving wellness for yourself and your team is the most crucial thing that every organization should follow.

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