The new normal presents opportunities as well as challenges, and businesses that can take advantage of it will reap considerable benefits. Prioritizing work wellness with actionable programs can attract and retain the kind of employees you need while helping to make them happier and healthier in the process.
Work wellness and health have always been an important part of a professional business.
In the emerging world of hybrid workplaces, health and wellness in the workplace have, however, become even more important. Employee retention is vital to business success today. Companies that can retain skilled (and healthy) workers in their employ longer will reap the benefits. After all, improved mental health means increased productivity, fewer instances of burnout, and costs saved on employee retention.
Emphasizing health and wellness in the workplace through formal policies demonstrates that they’re far from “back burner” issues for your company. And there are more than simple good wishes to support the assertion. Recent reports on employee wellbeing hold that 90% of all employers intend to increase investment in mental health support. This includes stress management and telemedicine.
If you’re looking to take advantage of this growing trend, here are some guidelines to consider.
Launch a Work Wellness Program for Employees
An employee work wellness program is a formal effort to promote mental and emotional wellbeing.
With the rise of a hybrid work environment, that often means setting up a lifestyle spending account. This provides a certain amount of funding to each employee for the express purpose of promoting health and wellness in the workplace. This differs from a simple pay raise in that the account may only be spent in specific ways.
However, options exist to accommodate individual preferences and work needs. For example, someone who works most of the time in a central office might use the employee wellness program to purchase a gym membership that they use on the way home each night.
A remote employee who spends most of their time working from home might use the same money to purchase an exercise bike or similar in-home equipment. Both options address the same need for employee wellness in a way that suits individual lifestyles.
Smarten Spaces is set up to handle lifestyle spending accounts and similar measures comprising an employee wellness program. These include smart booking solutions to regulate gym access. They also include employee feedback to better engage workers with the benefits of the program.
Work Wellness Sets Reasonable Work Boundaries
No one can be “on” all the time. Work wellness often depends on care being taken for aspects of their lives outside work.
That can be a big selling point when attracting new talent while retaining existing employees. This, in turn, creates a loyal and engaged workforce. One who can be counted on for many years to come.
A company that cares about work-life balance and takes tangible steps to help their workers better achieve it will retain and attract talent easily. Start by setting up effective work boundaries with manageable schedules. While these can be complicated with hybrid work schedules, they also reap considerable benefits. Flexibility is key for work wellness to be effective.
A deadline-driven schedule, instead of a set work shift, might work well for a remote employee juggling the needs of a family. Yet, in the same token, a full-time office worker could benefit from a set eight-hour schedule with no expected overtime.
Smarten Spaces can organize and simplify the scheduling process to help you set those kinds of boundaries. You can find the optimum work schedule that meets everyone’s needs with a minimum of compromise.
Leverage Health and Wellness Technologies
The advent of new technologies is rapidly changing how business is conducted.
Zoom meetings, for instance, were a comparative rarity just a few years ago. Today, are a seemingly indispensable part of the business landscape. This trend has touched every aspect of our lives. This includes health and work wellness technologies that you can leverage to help your employees.
These can include things like telemedicine—allowing doctors to perform remote examinations and check-ups—as well as online wellness courses. It also includes health and fitness trackers, and the like. As with other features in a workplace wellness program, flexibility is the watchword. Individual employees are able to use it in a manner that suits them best.
Smarten Spaces provides a comprehensive suite of tools to organize and streamline your use of those technologies, to improve both the physical and mental health of your team.
Initiate Offers For Flexibility
Flexibility, as mentioned, is a key consideration in order to retain employees and achieve a good work wellness model, but its importance cannot be emphasized enough.
The pandemic brought an immediate need for workplace flexibility, and companies responded by moving away from centralized office spaces and traditional 9-5 hours.
Flexible work means offering the kind of structure that works best for the employee. Some might prefer working from home full time, while others may prefer (or even need) a traditional office environment. The majority might prefer some variation of both—which can cause a lot of scheduling headaches.
This is where Smarten Spaces steps in, specifically, the world’s first hybrid workplace scheduler. Arrange your teams to maximize productivity while giving your teams the flexibility to plan when to come to work with easy collaboration between managers and their teams.
A solution like this helps you know who is working at and out of the office at a glance, and understand how your hybrid workspace is being utilized with data and AI-driven insights.
Communicate Effectively
Communication within the ranks of a given business has always been important, but the advent of the hybrid workplace makes it even more vital.
With effective relationships between colleagues and open lines of communication, you can keep your operations running smoothly and make adjustments quickly when the unexpected arises.
Effective communication also ensures that everyone receives critical information, especially remote workers who might not be in regular contact with a central office. Smarten Spaces provides an all-in-one platform that facilitates employee feedback and strengthens effective communication—all critical elements to achieve work wellness.
Manage Well-Being in A Hybrid Workplace With Smarten Spaces
The new normal is changing seemingly every day, with businesses looking at a radically different environment from the one they were facing just a few years ago (perhaps even a few months ago).
That presents opportunities as well as challenges, and businesses that can take advantage of it will reap considerable benefits. Prioritizing work wellness with actionable programs can attract and retain the kind of employees you need while helping to make them happier and healthier in the process.
Smarten Spaces strives to empower employers: by using cutting-edge tools to prioritize work wellness.
Contact us today to learn more about how our solutions can raise health and wellness in the workplace.