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Health Behavior: 6 Measures To Enhance Employee Wellness

7 min read
Last Updated on 29 November, 2023

Human health behavior is regulated by various internal and external factors that can transform personal, professional, social, and cultural boundaries.

Health behavior has a profound impact on employees' health and mental well-being.

The implementation of wellness measures in the workplace has become imperative over the years. It is because health behavior tends to refine the organizational culture. And, therefore companies today are primarily focusing on improving employees' lifestyles to create a better tomorrow for all.

Although wellness and well-being are two different terms, they are of equal importance to employees. Its implementation ensures reduction in healthcare cost, enhances employee performance and progress.

Why Implement Healthy Behavior at the Workplace?

A great workplace culture intends to embrace an environment that fosters;

To be precise, it strategically aims to support and strengthen health behavior.

The key ingredient to promoting healthy behavior at any organization is motivation and exposure to a healthy lifestyle. A lackluster environment at work can hamper an individual's professional and organizational growth.

Promoting the culture of health and wellness is vital at the workplace.

Related: 18 Lesser-Known Stress Relief Activities & Ideas for Office

The Importance of Health Behavior In Corporate Culture

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Corporate wellness is like soft power. Behind every successful company, employees are the ones driving the steering wheels. So, it is essential to look into their health and wellness for the greater good.
And, so corporate wellness programs have become a prerequisite today.

Here is some data that shows why the employees' mental and behavioral health or well-being is of utmost importance in the 21st century.

According to statistics, Mental health conditions such as depression highly contribute to disability and unemployment. It can also reduce employees' cognitive functionality to about 35%. Approximately 57% of employees suffer from a range of moderate depression and 40% from severe depression.

Similarly, the working environment creates a huge impact on employees' mental health. According to UK mental health statistics, 1 in 6.8 people experience mental health conditions in the workplace, about 14.7%.

The Involving Risk Factors

Neglecting health behavior at the workplace can be harmful.

Employees often feel undermined at work mainly because they lack motivation and appreciation by their employers or team leaders.

Employee engagement is a decisive factor that is inclusive of employees' sweeping health and wellness. Sometimes, even a small appreciation can work wonders by sowing the seeds of healthy work culture and conduct.

Setting up a culture of growth and well-being can be the ruling force of the 21st-century work environment. And, underestimating the basic employee needs can cost the organization a real-time loss.

There are a lot of risk factors involved with unhealthy behavior in the workplace. For example;

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6 Health behavior measures for workplace wellness

Let's look into the 6 health behaviors that can be applied in the workplaces for employees' good health;

1.Wellness initiatives to promote positive emotions.

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Wellness is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
– The World Health Organization

Wellness is vital for a healthy and fulfilling life. Good health attracts positive emotions and adds empathetic value to the workplace experience. Positive emotions have the underlying power to make the employee experience better.

Positive emotions keep employees' cognitive capabilities in check. Besides, wellness initiatives to promote positive emotions enhance the 4P's prerequisites for promoting health behavior for corporate wellness.

4P's:

  1. Poise
  2. Performance
  3. Positivity
  4. Productivity

To implement a wellness culture, organizations must open its door to mental and behavioral health and well-being implementations.

Related: Vibrational Energy and 9 Reasons To Encourage For Your Workplace Wellness

2. Encouraging employees to be physically active.

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Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, and it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity.
– John F. Kennedy

Employee physical health is an important concern today to reduce the health risk. Without being physically active, employees cannot reap the benefits of professional or personal success.

Physical activity is essential for individuals to determine their health behavior. Embarking the employees on a fitness journey will benefit the organization on different levels.

So, physical activity is essential to avoid the risk of developing severe diseases like cardiovascular issues, diabetes, blood pressure, obesity, and more. Poor health leaves a negative impact on employee behavior concerning health.

Even a 7-minutes workout can keep your health in good shape.

3. Helping employees cope up with substance abuse due to stress.

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If the last to know he's an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected.
– Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

Stress is a common factor that can make one vulnerable to addictive substances like tobacco, alcohol, or drugs. Stress can be emotionally challenging, involving perception or response to harmful, threatening, or problematic stimuli.

Stress can make you stumble many times, even at the workplace, to achieve your desired goals. And, to cope up with anxiety, you switch to toxic substances like smoking, drinking, etc., as a short-term solution.

Inability to control behavioral health can cost employees more than ever.
Therefore, understanding health behavior is salient to the modern workforce. Workplaces can hold workshops or provide free counseling and assist employees in improving self-determination.

4. Adapt to a healthy lifestyle.

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The six best doctors: sunshine, water, rest, air, exercise, and diet.
– Wayne Fields

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is of great significance today. A good lifestyle sums up good health behaviors. It can elevate your mental and physical resilience at the workplace.

Here are 10 lifestyle choices for employees to get started with:

  • Practice a regular set of exercises
  • Switch to a healthy diet
  • Add reading to your routine
  • Start your day with yoga
  • Calculate your daily water consumption
  • Do a Social media detox
  • Look into your financial wellness goals
  • Practice Gratitude on an everyday basis
  • Try journaling as a cognitive behavioral therapy technique
  • Get some good sleep

Related: 10 Awesome Lifestyle Choices For Employees To Elevate Their Work-Life

Once you start admiring a healthy lifestyle, you can surely see the changes in yourself.

By implementing the above techniques of lifestyle choices employees into their lives, they can revive their energy at work. An excellent lifestyle can boost employees' physical, mental health, behavioral, and spiritual wellness.

Try it today!

5. Reduce the office stigmas.

Improves_Employee_Morale

Making the workplace stigma-free is a sign of positive company culture. And, it is only through imposing positive thinking among co-workers. Even though it gets difficult, it isn't impossible.

Often, employees worry about revealing their sufferings or problems when asked about their lower performance. Primarily because of the employees' fear of being judged.
Working in a negative work culture can certainly damage health behavior.

Here are 6 ways you can create a stigma-free workplace that is more inclusive and diverse-

  • Create a well-enhanced communication system among employees
  • Provide free counseling; online/offline
  • Try to create an all-embracing modern work culture
  • Make sure you beat the social challenges at the workplace
  • Provide 24×7 health and human services
  • Foster a culture of positivity, knowledge-based and supportive work system

And, say no to imputation at the organization.

Related: Top 5 Benefits Of Gratitude On Workplace Wellness

6. Mindfulness is the key.

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Your goal is not to battle with the mind but to witness the mind.
– Swami Muktananda

Mindfulness meditation is the most effective technique among all the factors. It can help retain an awakening workforce and safeguard a well-balanced work culture from degeneration.
Therefore, cultivate mindfulness practices among employees to dispose of the culture of an unhealthy work environment. Health behavior among employees can only be augmented with methods that outshine apathy.

With mindfulness practices, employees can remain undisturbed in hostile situations at work.

It also improves the alertness and activeness of the mind, body, and spirit. The best part is that it can be exercised anywhere and help you discover opportunities that lie ahead.

Moreover, diligence is a change for good. Diligent employees can bring the company one step closer to creating a significant workplace.

Also read: 13 Mindfulness Meditation Exercises To Improve Your Employees Well-being

Bottom Line

Health behavior is the steering wheel of present-day organizations.

Today, health and wellness are something that every candidate looks for before choosing a job. To develop a culture of health behavior, get your workforce a one-stop corporate wellness program.

With an exclusive AI-enhanced employee wellness platform, the journeys will be more amazing and less challenging. They can improve their well-being and stay motivated to work.

This article is written by Parismita Goswami who is a content writer and marketer at Vantage Circle. A feverish poet and cinephile with an intense taste for music, specifically rock, she has the heart of an explorer, learner, and is a lover of the Himalayas. To get in touch, reach out to editor@vantagecircle.com

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