Are your employees well? You sure hope so as they come into work and take care of their responsibilities. Wellness, however, isn’t just about how they feel. It combines so much more of the employee’s life and actions.
Physical wellness. We often first think of wellness being physical with an employee’s health. How healthy are your employees? While you can’t ask them directly, you can offer them programs and incentives to improve their health. Even if you already have a wellness program in place, it is important to remind your employees of it continually through internal communication efforts.
Mental wellness. Along with physical wellness comes mental wellness. Again, it is important to not just have mental health wellness programs available through benefit packages, but to also remind your employees of these. It also means increasing these or even making them available on site if trauma or specific situations occur at the workplace or in the community.
Financial wellness. An employee’s life is more than just working and receiving a paycheck. Because of this, it is important to also consider the financial wellness of your employees and ways you can strengthen that. It could be through classes focused on financial topics, helping them find financial resources or even through credit union membership exclusive to your employees.
Intellectual wellness. Are you encouraging your employees to continue to better themselves through lifelong learning? This can be through external programs you reimburse or even providing internal courses to better train, prepare and advance your employees. These don’t have to be long. In fact, short sessions may be preferred by employees during the day.
Through all of this, you want to make sure you have open lines of communication with your employees as well as work with human resources to make sure you are following proper protocol and processes. It is also helpful to have an award system tied into this. It doesn’t have to be a costly award. In fact, many times, employees simply appreciate having their name in print or announced.
You don’t have to start these programs on your own. Your human resources department should have access to established programs within each of these areas, and you can always adapt to what is working for your employees. The important aspect to remember is to see your employees holistically as people with many intricate parts of their life beyond their customer service responsibilities. In that, the healthier the employee is overall, the healthier they are as your employee working on behalf of your brand and company.