Healthy Schemes to increase your staff productivity

May 26
07:45

2011

Mark Montanana

Mark Montanana

  • Share this article on Facebook
  • Share this article on Twitter
  • Share this article on Linkedin

This article outlines how health and wellbeing related perks can improve productivity and staff retention.

mediaimage
Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

In today’s tough business environment,Healthy Schemes to increase your staff productivity Articles bosses always want to squeeze the maximum effort from their employees. There is an increasing trend to offer health and wellbeing perks such as corporate health insurance , cycle to work schemes or discounted gym memberships.

These perks not only offer a way to increase productivity and reduce employee absenteeism but contribute to increase job satisfaction and employee engagement.

Some examples of successful healthy schemes in the workplace are:

- Edenred Cycle to work scheme : This scheme is proving to be one of the fastest employee benefits in the UK, allowing companies to buy bikes and lease them to employees over a fixed period of time. The Edenred Cycle to work scheme is run in partnership with Halfords and allows employees to choose from a wide range of makes and models of bikes and accessories up to a value of £1000. The benefits are numerous including improving staff well being and morale, reducing car park costs and traffic congestions, even making savings on your national insurance contributions.

-Healthy eating schemes: In this scheme the company tends to provide information about how to achieve a balanced diet. Healthy eating essentially means eating foods from all the different food groups in the right amounts. Guiding your employees through the necessary steps to achieve a balanced diet is something that it does not cost much time or money and it can reap huge rewards. It is of course important to preach with example and offer healthy options in the company canteen like fruit and salads.

-Health Checks in the work place: This initiative has been pioneered by the financial firm Hymans Robertson and offers health tests to all their employees to check basic health parameters such as cholesterol level or blood pressure. This initiative has the benefit of detecting potential ailments before they become too serious which subsequently reduces employee sickness. Moreover the company personnel feel appreciated as their employers are showing a genuine concern for their health and well-being.

-Subsidise Gym Memberships: This is a widely adopted scheme; one example of a company successfully adopting this scheme is energy giant Schlumberger which has reimbursed employees up to £250 of a gym annual membership.

The best news is that healthy work initiatives are not only feasible of big corporations, healthy eating or cycle to work schemes are very cheap to implement. Furthermore some insurance companies will offer small company health insurance packages.

It is really important not to overlook these initiatives as recent studies have shown that health related benefits play a major part in staff retention.