Help your employees stick to their healthy New Year’s resolutions

Every year most of us make New Year’s resolutions and more often than not, after a few days, we’ve cheated or given up! Many of us are dwelling on those extra pounds gained over Christmas, setting fitness goals for the year and wanting to do something to feel better.

Health and wellbeing should be a key consideration for your benefits strategy. However, it is not just about focusing on your employees’ physical health, it’s also important to address mental and financial issues. Money worries in particular can leave people feeling troubled after the Christmas period. As an employer you can help your staff to manage their money better.

You can support your people with a healthier approach by implementing a range of health and wellbeing initiatives:

Encourage exercise: Why not coordinate group activities such as 5 a side football or lunchtime walking groups? Within a team, your staff will feel more motivated towards achieving their goals. You may be able to help with the cost of gym memberships by negotiating group discounts, subsidise membership or even up your game (budget depending) with an office gym! Have a yoga enthusiast in house? Ask them to run lunchtime sessions for their colleagues. Your staff will feel refreshed and motivated.

Help with healthy eating: The Christmas period is behind us, as are the goodies that go along with it. The New Year is the perfect opportunity to introduce a healthy lifestyle. Provide employees with fruit to snack on, get rid of the naughty snacks in the vending machine and encourage healthy recipe swaps. There are many initiatives you can implement to support your staff in their goals and they will love you for it.

Work toward your Corporate Social Responsibility goals with a charity challenge: Why not encourage the team to go for a ‘dry January’ – no booze for the whole month! Not only will they feel better for it, they should have saved a few pennies and raised money for a great cause along the way. Or, get a charity team together for a sponsored run or bike ride. There’s nothing like a bit of healthy competition to get people moving.

Help with money management: Many staff need help in the current economy to make the right financial decisions for them. Running financial education workshops is a great way to help your employees understand and plan for their short and longer term financial security.

Tackle mental health issues: Employee Assistance Programmes (or EAPs) assist employees in dealing with personal problems that may negatively impact their performance at work, as well as their health and wellbeing. Providing an EAP can have commercial benefits, with a reduction in the impact of personal issues on employee productivity and motivation. So if you run an EAP, now is the perfect time to remind your staff it’s there.

If you would like to find out more about wellbeing in the workplace, then please download the guide ‘A well workforce, what does it look like and how can I achieve it?’ created by our sister company Secondsight.

Happy and healthy 2017 to you and your employees!

Mybenefitsatwork

About Mybenefitsatwork

Mybenefitsatwork is a high-impact, low cost employee engagement tool that enables you to tell your employees all about the pension and benefits you provide.