A healthy and happy staff means a productive staff. In a standard office filled with 8-12 hours of non-stop sitting, birthday cakes, take out food, harsh lighting, computer hypnosis, and after-work happy hours, a person’s health can easily suffer without them even realizing; and when their health is suffering, so is their productivity and work ethic. Lucky you can help your staff get fit at the office and be more productive.

Create a culture: Don’t half-ass this (for lack of a better term). If you want to be proactive about increasing your staff’s health and wellness, then make a big and deliberate gesture to do so. Send out a memo that you’re starting a new wellness program, and get your staff to be excited about it. In essence: make wellness and health ‘cool’ in your office. You don’t want your staff to be healthy – rather, you want your staff to want to be healthy.

Start Small: You can’t make your staff go to the gym. Chances are, you don’t even want to go to the gym. But that doesn’t mean you can’t take baby steps to promote little exercise activities. Form a lunchtime walking group and take a walk around the neighborhood for 15 minutes (better yet, you can power-walk around your neighborhood!) Get some do-it-yourself yoga tapes and create a mini yoga class in a conference room during lunch. Walk stairs for 5-10 minutes in the stairwell. Just be creative! Any amount of physical activity that you do is more than you were doing before.

Eat Right: Ditch the fatty junk food in the break room and replace it with healthy alternatives like apples, bananas, whole wheat bagels & non-fat cream cheese, baked crackers, and so fourth. All that little snacking adds up! Also, if you have a birthday party or a celebration, provide healthier foods like fruit or non-fat ice cream instead of cake. Encourage your office manager to seek out healthy options when he or she shops for the office.

Promote Health: Many gyms offer incentives to companies if you sign a corporate package. Essentially, your company pays for part of your staff’s gym membership (which is tax-deductible by the way). This makes gym memberships for your staff more affordable, and your die-hard exercisers in the office can go to the gym with each other on lunch or after work! Also, if you don’t have a health insurance package for your staff, then get one. You can find tons of inexpensive health insurance packages for small and medium businesses that won’t break the bank.

Go Ergonomic: Sitting at a computer all day long can be taxing on your body. Replacing your keyboards and office chairs with ergonomic alternatives can alleviate a lot of stress on your body. (Try using a swiss ball instead of an actual office chair for a fun and ergonomic option – it’s great for your back!) Also, make sure that your computer monitors are at eye-level, and keep the brightness setting on your monitors turned down to avoid squinting and eye strain.

Feel free to Contact Me if you have any questions!