Wellbeing Activities Your Employees Need in their Lives

Employee wellbeing continues to be a priority for many employers, and it's easy to see why. Looking after your teams' health isn't just good for your employees, it can benefit employers too! 

62% of employees said that wellbeing support would be a key factor when applying for a new job (Forbes). Other benefits include:

• Increasing productivity and motivation

• Building morale

• Decreases work-related stress

• Lower sickness absence

• Healthier and more inclusive work culture

• Nearly one-third of employees are struggling with their financial wellbeing, and 24% said that they were concerned about their mental and emotional health (Forbes). So, supporting your employees’ health and wellbeing will be more important than ever going into 2022.

Wherever your teams are based, there are things you can do to help your team with their wellbeing. This could be expanding on your current employee benefits to include ones focused on improving wellbeing, including:

• Cycle to Work schemes and Gym & Fitness Discounts to help with physical health.

• Employee Assistance Programmes to provide mental health and emotional support.

• Pluxee Discounts and our cashback-earning Pluxee Card to help your employees’ financial wellbeing.

On top of benefits, you can make your workplace culture more focused on wellbeing by introducing activities to your working day to help your employees. Here are just a few activity ideas to get you started…

Six wellbeing activities to introduce to your working week

1. Start up a 'Wellness Wednesday':  We all know that mid-week can be difficult and cause a lull in our working week, with hump day potentially causing us to feel unmotivated. So why not make Wednesday a dedicated wellbeing day? This makes the mid-week slump easier to manage and gives you and your employees something to look forward to each week. You could run challenges on the day, virtual or in-person wellbeing sessions, or send out top tips or inspiration on what your teams could try that day.

2. Offer fitness sessions: Whether you run in-person or virtual classes (or a bit of both!) exercise classes like Yoga, Dance or Stretches can help break up your employees' day. Plus, it makes sure they’re not spending all day sitting at their computer and helps them get active and improve their mental and physical wellbeing.

3. Get creative: Having a creative outlet, from painting to pottery, can help with mental health. They can reduce stress and anxiety as well as help us feel happier. So, why not get your creative employees to run sessions to help their other teams, or get in external experts or send out craft kits.

4. Run mindfulness and meditation sessions: Mindfulness can help relieve stress and improve our mental health. You could run sessions for your employees, give them access to apps that can help or send out videos they can follow when it’s convenient for them. At Pluxee UK, we’ve run 15-minute meditation sessions virtually that employees could join, and so they could take a break and focus on themselves.

5. Hold meetings outside: Whether you get outside to sit in the park or even have walking meetings, this helps your teams get extra fresh air and sunshine (weather permitting), can encourage creativity, and helps them get more exercise.

6. Run wellbeing challenges: Having a goal or a challenge can motivate us. So, why not set up challenges to encourage healthier habits? These could be daily, weekly or monthly step or activity challenges, water, meditation or even creativity challenges. Make sure there is a reward at the end to make it worthwhile for your teams!

Enhance employee wellbeing with Pluxee UK!

We know it isn’t always easy to know how to offer a comprehensive staff wellbeing programme that benefits all employees. If you want to learn more about the ways you can support your employees' health and wellbeing, why not get in touch with our experts? They can help guide you through solutions and plans you can put in place to help your staff.

Sources:

Forbes