5 Steps to Driving a Healthier Workplace Culture

As a CEO, you have the opportunity to build a supportive work environment from the top down, ensuring the promotion of health and well-being not just for your employees, but also for yourself. Here Rob White, on behalf of ZZap, a leading supplier of the latest cash handling technology for businesses, provides 5 steps to driving a healthier workplace culture.

Employee wellness is a smart investment for today’s managers. Research has demonstrated the link connecting employee health and your business bottom line.

Employee health problems lead to approximately 41 minutes of absence and 2 hours and 29 minutes of lost productivity each week. In any given workweek, that amounted to more time spent impaired while at work than being absent from the job. According to a study by Harvard University, for every $1 spent on health management, absenteeism costs fall by about $2.73.

But you can’t just put a wellness program into place and call it a job well done. CEOs need to drive a thriving workplace culture of wellness in order to affect sustainable behaviour change.

Why business leaders?

As a CEO, you have the power to drive the culture you want to see in your business. The reason is simple: you can lead their employees by example. But embracing your culture yourself, you also experience all the benefits of the positive work culture you’re trying to create.

Employees are much more likely to get involved in wellness activities if they see that their CEO and senior managers are doing so. CEOs don’t just need to get involved, they need to create the framework that allows a positive company culture and be the figurehead for that culture.

By giving employees permission to keep their health and well-being a top priority, employees will be much more likely to adopt healthy behaviours at the workplace. Whether that’s staying active, making better nutritional choices or engaging in stress-relief activities.

How can CEOs shape a healthier culture?

1. Practice and promote self-care

Healthy lifestyles mean looking after the mind as well as the body. Stress is one of the biggest factors of employee health and practicing self-care shows employees that they can too. Self-care means resisting working extra and not looking at your emails at the weekend. Take your vacations, use your PTO, and make it okay to let work go.

2. Make wellness convenient

Many full-time employees are hesitant to get involved in the practical elements of company culture or practicing workplace health because they’re busy. Make it easy for them by managing their workload with wellness in mind and give them the physical and emotional breathing room they need to profit from your culture.

3. Stay active

Being physically active is important, but in this case you need to stay active in the promotion of your company culture. Living and breathing your company culture is all well and good, but without promotion or context, it can start to have adverse effects. For example, practicing self-care may look to employees like you’re going home when there’s work still to be done. It’s important to regularly reinforce your company culture, especially if your business has regular staff turnover.

4. Show gratitude

Being thankful and expressing gratitude is one of the easiest things you can do to boost employee well-being. Show your employees that you actually care about them and you’re proud of the work they do by thanking them for a job well done. If you make a habit of finding things to be grateful for, your employees will take note and start to do the same.

5. Participate

If you say it, do it. Employees won’t listen to CEOs who don’t practice what they preach. In the worst case scenario, you foster resentment and negativity. That’s why it’s so important to participate in any group wellness activities or challenges.

At the end of the day, employees want their CEOs to give them permission and say that it’s okay to take a walk at lunch, attend a company yoga class or simply go home on time. By using your role to lead a healthy example, you can help create sustainable changes for your people. Try implementing some of these tips and create a happier workforce.