If you are an employer, one of your biggest challenges is to ensure that every member of your team is happy and healthy at work. This is all part of your duty of care, and not only is it morally the right thing to do, but it will help in terms of your business’ productivity too. Remember, people work for around eight hours every day, not to mention the commute they need to do if they are working outside of their home. This is a large proportion of their lives, so it’s crucial that you do what you can to support health improvement and give your workers the tools they need to achieve that. Read on to find out more about what you can do. 

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Provide Good Training

When it comes to good health and safety practices, you might hope that your team has common sense and will read any policies you create on the subject. However, although for many people this will be true, as an employer, it’s best to ensure that your staff understand rather than assuming they do. This is why good health and safety training is essential. 

When you offer regular (one-off training is not enough) training about health and safety, your team will understand much more, and they’ll be able to take better care of themselves, each other, and any visitors to the site or office. Post labor law posters in prominent places to show your team you’re serious about health and safety. 

Encourage Regular Breaks 

Sitting in front of your computer screen for hours at a time is bad for you. It’s bad for your physical health because it can cause eye strain, lead to obesity, and even cause blood clots, and it’s bad for your mental health because it can lead to stress and depression. Therefore, it’s crucial that you encourage your workers to take regular breaks. They should, if at all possible, be taking a ten-minute break every hour. This break needs to be one they spend away from their screen, moving around, and if they can, they should go outside. 

Make taking a break part of the culture of your workplace so no one feels that they have to keep working. If you have a physical office, make sure there is a separate breakroom for employees to use, and put some fresh snacks in there too. If someone works remotely, set up reminders for them to take breaks, and try to schedule any appointments and meetings with an allowance for this. 

Offer Health-Focused Perks

If you want your employees to be as healthy as possible, offering them the right perks to ensure this can happen is a good idea. One thing you can do is ensure every worker has health insurance, although this is only useful after they have got sick (it might, however, help them feel less stressed to know this is in place). 

Another idea is to offer gym membership and sporting store discount to go with it so that everyone can be properly equipped for their workouts. Or why not arrange a cycle-to-work scheme or have a fitness instructor come in every morning to ensure your team are fit and healthy? The perks you offer will depend on your budget and the team itself, so take some time to consider what might be appropriate. 

Keep Track Of Your Team’s Satisfaction

Mental health is just as important as physical health, as you have hopefully understood by now. However, many businesses do overlook this, and they keep pushing their employees to do more and more, ignoring the negative result this can have on their workers. 

What you need to do as a good employee is to watch out for any signs of stress, anxiety, or depression in your team. Are they as productive as they once were? Are they joining in? Are they looking happy and healthy? If you notice anything amiss, take that person to one side and talk to them about how they are feeling. If there is a problem, they need to feel able to discuss it with you. 

Arrange Regular Get Togethers 

Having good relationships with coworkers is very important for your health. Workers who say they have a “best friend” at work are more than twice as committed to their jobs as those who don’t. Having a close friend in the office has been linked to both better job performance, fewer accidents, higher profits, and more engaged customers.

For business leaders, this means that holding regular social events where employees can get to know each other and make friends can be good for their health and the business. Think about it: if employees feel comfortable with their coworkers, they’re more likely to ask for help from them when they need it. They’ll also have a better time at work in general.

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