How Should Leaders Promote Healthier Workplaces?

The food industry is an industry that always has its discussions around the topic of health, but this is something that we don’t always consider within small to medium-sized businesses. While there’s a lot of talk on health well-being and mental health, common physical health is just as important. So when it comes to being an effective leader for a business, we’ve got to learn how to promote workplace health but also make sure that we promote a healthy lifestyle. So how can we do this?

Implement Healthy Practices in the Workplace

It’s about leading by example, if we are shown to have healthier practices, this will begin to slowly seep into our employees’ mindset. It’s important to have certain touchstones of health dotted around the office. A good example would be a juice bar or juicing machine. Juicing is a great way to detoxify and energize us, which can have a massive impact on productivity. You can use this link to take a deep dive into juicing and see if it works for your employees. But also, it’s about slowly getting rid of those unhealthy practices that we’ve come to rely on. A very common example is having doughnuts or pizza at the end of the working week. If you want to decrease productivity, this is the best way to do it! While not many people would like you for swapping pizza or doughnuts for fruits, you can find tastier and healthier choices.

Focus on Prevention

Prevention is much easier than cure, and it’s also much cheaper! Everybody is more focused on health than ever, and if you want to focus on general preventive health, you could bring a doctor into the workplace and speak to your employees about certain health issues. But you can also incorporate this into the perks of the job. For example, you could offer rebates for arranging flu vaccinations. You could also look at rebates on health insurance or provide more incentives. These are all little things that can help you in the long run because they will reduce sick leave, and make for a healthier workplace environment.

Encouraging More Physical Exercise

Physical exercise is a great way to encourage better health, but it doesn’t need to be expensive. You might not want to start a running club, but if you are looking to encourage employees to be healthier, you may want to add standing desks, install bike racks in the car park, or provide allowances for public transport. Another unconventional approach could be to have walking meetings. You may think that you are part of The West Wing by doing this, but when you think about the benefits of walking, it could stop that lethargy that occurs during mid-afternoon meetings.

Creating Healthy Attitudes

This is something that will take a while to embed, but from a cultural perspective, healthy attitudes will improve productivity and well-being in the long run. It’s a very difficult thing to get right, but when we start to incorporate health as a priority, we have to remember that it should come from the employees. Healthy attitudes can come from well-being hours, allowing people to finish an hour earlier so they can focus on their well-being, but also providing implements around the office that can help. Of course, we should focus on improving our employees’ education as well. Sometimes, we don’t have the relevant knowledge to improve our health. And as things are changing so much in terms of exercise and attitudes to health, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest data. What we can do is facilitate discussions on the latest trends and how it impacts people in the workplace. We could encourage our employees to speak to a doctor or a practicing dietitian about certain concerns, and then help them to manifest ways to incorporate being healthy in the workplace. Many people find it difficult to be healthy in the workplace because of the temptations, but also a lack of time to prepare things before coming into the office. In which case, what we need to do is to bring healthier options into the working environment and encourage your employees to choose their best options.

Promoting health is something that doesn’t come easy because we have to find the right balance. Some people do not want to be told how to be healthy, but others merely need guidance. But we have to remember that for the benefit of productivity and workplace happiness, health should be a priority.