Ways to Encourage Health Amongst Your Colleagues
If you’re looking to improve your efficiency as a business, or personally if you’re a self-employed team of one – it’s important to think healthily. It’s one of those things we all know we should do but we find there’s very little time for. Encouraging others and ourselves to think more about our health is about building small habits that accumulate over time.
So what should we do to encourage an improvement in healthy habits for ourselves, and how do you encourage health amongst your colleagues – without lecturing? In this article we take a look a three simple ways to get started.
3 Simply Ways to Encourage Health Amongst Your Colleagues
Ways to Encourage Health Amongst Your Colleagues #1
Provide Resources and Training
For those in an office environment, there is the tendency to fall on old habits. For example, for a quick pick-me-up, people instantly turn to coffee. While there’s certainly benefits of having commercial coffee machines in an office environment, we must remember that we should have an understanding of how to work with our energy levels.
This is why the right resources and training can be invaluable. For example some people don’t feel very productive if they have too much caffeine and can even have the caffeine jitters, but caffeine is something that can work effectively if you take it at the right time of day in the right quantities.
If we can take advantage of resources that highlight the factors that can improve our productivity such as access to information about general health, mental health, as well as how to work more effectively, this can encourage in our colleagues (and ourselves) a far better understanding of their health which will have positive effects on every aspect of their lives.
Further Reading: 5 Simple Ways to Improve the Quality of Your Life
Ways to Encourage Health Amongst Your Colleagues #2
Promote Physical Activity
While we’ve all heard that sitting down is the new smoking, the negative effects of sitting down all day can be felt in our physicality but also our motivation. Promoting physical activity to combat the negative effects of a sedentary lifestyle can be achieved through different initiatives.
Lunchtime exercise sessions are one such method, however, when incorporating exercise regimes into our workplace we’ve got to provide a plethora of options based on the individual’s perceived workload. They may feel too busy to exercise at lunchtime and therefore incorporating a number of desk exercises can be very effective. For example, desk isometrics are fantastic for improving strength, promoting blood flow, and having an overall positive impact on an individual’s health levels.
Ways to Encourage Health Amongst Your Colleagues #3
Focus on Relationships
Every employee can feel like an island doing their own thing and if there’s one thing to keep colleagues together, it’s encouraging relationships and fostering an open environment where people feel comfortable discussing various aspects of their lives and their health which will result in improved morale and reduced time off.
Of course, a culture of collaboration and teamwork will result in positive working relationships and this will have a wonderful effect on employee well-being.
Further Reading: 13 Secrets of People Who Are Never Stressed
To encourage the notion of health ‘amongst your colleagues’, we have to employ a number of different tactics. Ultimately we can promote healthier lifestyles but each individual, is exactly that, and they have the choice as to whether they should undertake these healthier changes or not.
But always remember to emphasise that the benefits of a healthier lifestyle inside the office will result in a healthier lifestyle outside the office – and this trickle down effect of leading by example, often improves individuals feelings of self-worth, which in return improves productivity. So it’s a win, win really!
Photos by Engin Akyurt
Follow The Life of Stuff on Facebook | X | Pinterest | Instagram