Nowadays, workplace and employee wellness is often seen as the responsibility of the employer. Research shows that firms that care about their employees’ health and well-being are more productive and have higher earnings.

The correlation between health and productivity seems so obvious and simple, yet companies still struggle with various aspects to routinely support the dimensions of employee health. Common health dimensions include physical, occupational, emotional, social, mental, financial, intellectual, and spiritual wellbeing.

Employee wellness translates to quality work-life culture. The process of change looks different for each individual and each firm. The menu below offers a diversity of directives to create both equality and health standards with work, life, and a firm’s culture.

Cohort Plan This plan focuses on recruiting key experts amongst existing employees to form cohorts.

These employees are both knowledgeable and passionate about whatever wellness topic or dimension they are “experts” in. Members of the cohorts enroll based on their natural interest or concern regarding the topics of wellness. Firms must be committed to support the learning and development of these cohorts through providing necessary resources, participation, and autonomy. They must be willing to allow implementation and execution of whatever strategy, project, or event the cohorts decide. Primarily, leaders listen to feedback from employees without repercussions. 

Affinity Groups These groups are created with the focus of providing a safe space to talk about health dimensions.

Participation from leadership and upper management is crucial to setting the atmosphere for engagement. Enrollment into these groups is based on personal interest of the topics of focus. The meetings support non-judgmental listening and self-expression.

Human Resource (HR) Challenge This directive is led by all HR personnel.

Each assigned HR leader chooses their topics of interest or concern and recruit members of their team to garner/ spread interest throughout the organization. Groups work as a team to define a team goal related to improving health dimension/s. The team implements their strategy or work towards their goal collectively and track progress along the way. 

Department Challenge In this directive, leadership roles are assigned by department.

Each department chooses their dimension topic of interest from a comprehensive list of health improvement strategies and topics. They collaborate within their department to achieve or implement the project, event, or strategy of their choosing. Leaders of the department oversee the planning, organization, and scheduling required. Each department then presents or implement their strategy, track progress, and utilize feedback to make improvements where needed. 

Company Wide Program Key components of this directive emphasize transparency, authenticity, listening, trust, and leadership.

The firm utilizes a virtual platform to allow open communication amongst members of the organization. Each employee is asked to create a topic/thread focusing on their personal interest or dimension of concern. While discussions and posts can be anonymous, transparent participation by leadership and upper management is encouraged. Management and monitoring of the forum is handled by an assigned personnel. Threads are reviewed by the assigned representative of management to identify areas of concern or opportunities for support and improvement. Trust is established through autonomy of timely implementation of suggested improvements. Leadership leads by example through consistency and active participation in the forums.