Watch CBS News

How To Create A Culture Of Health In The Workplace

In today's ever-shifting marketplace, Michigan-based small business owners need to ensure every facet of their operations are optimized for peak performance. That includes their corporate culture, which should be focused on the mental and physical well-being of all its employees. Doing so will result in higher rates of productivity, retention and overall profitability. Here are a few tips on how to cultivate a health-focused company culture.

Create A Wellness Plan

To make employee health or part of your company's culture, you need to create a comprehensive wellness plan. It should be focused on influencing all of your employees to lead healthy and active lifestyles. To that end, your wellness plan should involve incentivizing health-related activities, recognizing individual fitness achievements and creating an environment that is conducive to health improvement.

Healthy Living Incentives

The easiest way to influence your team to eat healthily and exercise regularly is to provide incentives for your employees to improve their health. For instance, you could create a competition to see who can lose the most weight or take the most steps within one month and present the winner with a gift card. Some health insurance companies have resources that can help your company with this. Health Alliance Plan offers digital resources that make executing a fitness challenge easy and seamless. Moreover, you could offer to pay for things like gym memberships in order to make it easier for your staff to increase their level of regular physical activity.

Fostering A Healthy Environment

You should also ensure that the environment in which your employees work is conducive to health improvement. That can mean making healthy snacks available in the break room, creating an exercise area within the office and bringing in dietitians and meditation experts who can teach your team learn how to create healthy meal plans and more effectively manage their everyday stress. Going one step further, you might want to lead your team in midday walks around the neighborhood. It will not only give everyone a chance to recharge their batteries, but it will also function as a fun team building exercise.

Offer Health Insurance

While many small companies may feel that health insurance is an expense they can't afford, doing so actually offers several benefits for burgeoning firms. As shown by the results of a recent Glassdoor survey, the A+ players who will help your company realize its full potential will likely see health insurance as a deal breaker when considering potential employers.

More importantly, health insurance will play a key role in creating a health-centric company culture. Having access to preventative care, medication and specialists will allow your team to the treatment they need to stay healthy and properly treat any ongoing health issues.

The bottom line is, small businesses need to cultivate a company culture built around the health of its employees if it is to succeed in the contemporary marketplace.

 

To learn more about affordable healthcare plans for your small business, visit Health Alliance Plan.

For more tips and inspiration for small business owners,
visit CBS Small Business Pulse Detroit.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.