You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get started with workplace wellness programs, but the payoffs for productivity and employee morale can be huge.
If you’re in charge of organizing employee activities or simply want to help your coworkers feel happy, healthy, and productive without breaking the bank, you might be looking for helpful, low-cost ways to promote both physical and mental wellbeing.
Make wellness a priority in your workplace with these simple and inexpensive tools and activities.
1. Monday Meditation
Employees have to deal with stress both inside and outside the workplace every day, which can take a toll on their mental health and productivity. It’s vital that you take appropriate steps to deal with burnout, like starting your week with meditation.
Meditation is a great way to improve mental wellbeing by strengthening focus, reducing stress levels, enhancing clarity of thought, boosting memory function, and simply learning to stay calm during trying situations.
It might be challenging at first if you’re new to meditation techniques. But by making it a regular part of the week and using the right tools, you can create a habit that could help make your employees happier and more productive.
One useful tool is Insight Timer, an app that offers guided meditation practices, music tracks for relaxation, live yoga sessions, wellness content, and more.
With daily check-ins, a wide range of mindfulness activities, features for connecting to other users, and courses to help you learn more about practicing meditation, Insight Timer can help you start the week on a positive note.
Download: Insight Timer for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
2. Create a Virtual Water Cooler
Creating a virtual water cooler can be an effective workplace wellness initiative, especially for remote workers who may not have the opportunity to socialize with their colleagues in person. By establishing connections and sharing common interests outside of work, you can help foster a sense of community among your team.
This could be as simple as setting up a water cooler chat group on a workplace communication tool like Slack, where employees can share jokes, funny memes, exciting news articles, and chat about their day-to-day lives. This helps break the ice and encourages employees to get to know each other better. It can also help generate supportive connections and boost morale.
If you’re afraid you lack inspiration for spawning virtual water cooler conversations or activities, you can automate this process using a Slack integration like Donut. You can also use this tool to overcome isolation when working from home, as it helps to inspire interesting and fun discussions for your Slack group.
Download: Slack for Android | iOS (Free)
3. Encourage Work Breaks
While it’s essential to stay focused and productive in the workplace, that can be challenging to achieve during prolonged periods of sedentary work.
One way to overcome this is by encouraging employees to take work breaks to rejuvenate their minds and bodies. Not only does this help reduce the risk of burnout, but taking short breaks can promote creativity and productivity, as well.
You can help your employees follow this rule by leaving fun little reminders around the office that encourage taking breaks, or using a break reminder app like Work Break.
Work Break allows you to schedule your breaks with customized reminders. You can then use your break to take a power nap, stand up, go for a walk, or drink some water.
Download: Work Break for Android (Free)
4. Start a Virtual Book Club
Reading is one of the most effective ways to improve your mental wellbeing, reduce stress levels, and enhance creativity.
Starting a virtual book club can engage employees, pushing them to explore new genres and find new interests outside of work. Learning new information from surprising sources can have significant effects on your motivation and bring new inspiration to your work.
You can create a Slack group for your virtual book club and invite a few colleagues to choose books you will read and discuss at a later date. Alternatively, you can use a dedicated app, like Bookship, to share your reading experience.
You and your coworkers can share progress using the app’s social features, or take advantage of its video calling features. You can also customize your calendar to manage your meetings and enjoy personalized book recommendations.
Download: Bookship for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
5. Set Weekly Wellness Challenges
Setting weekly challenges is a fun and effective way to keep your employees engaged in their workplace wellness initiatives. This can be anything from committing to drinking more water, walking or biking to work, taking the stairs, eating healthy snacks, and more.
For example, you can start a step counter challenge (10,000 steps per day) in your workplace using Count.it.
You can connect Count.it to some of the most popular wearable fitness trackers to monitor your physical activity level and have friendly competitions with your colleagues.
You can also add it to your Slack workspace for live daily or weekly leaderboards.
Not only can this help improve workplace wellbeing, but it can also serve as a fun bonding activity for your team.
Download: Count.it for Android | iOS (Free)
6. Encourage Exercise
Exercise can be a significant part of workplace wellness. It is good for employees’ physical health, helps decrease stress levels, and boosts energy levels.
You can encourage your coworkers to be more active throughout the day by suggesting short walks during work hours to increase physical activity and stretch out muscles and joints after long periods spent sitting.
To mix things up, use a fitness app like FitOn.
Choose from its long list of workouts, including strength training, cardio, yoga, and more. This tool also provides insightful content on wellness, fitness, nutrition, and self-care.
Download: FitOn for Android | iOS (Free, subscription available)
7. Play Fun Games on Slack
You’ll probably be glad to learn that Slack isn’t just for work-related conversations. You can also use it to play fun social games with your colleagues. This can help improve employee wellness by inspiring fun and thoughtful discussions in your Slack workspace.
There are several fun Slack games that you can play, including Trivia, Tic-Tac-Toe, and more. Most of these games are easy to set up and provide a quick way for you to relax and socialize with colleagues.
Try These Wellness Ideas for a Happier and More Productive Workplace
Employee wellness is an area that’s worth focusing on to promote a healthy lifestyle and reduce the risk of burnout in the workplace.
By implementing some of the tips in this article, you can encourage healthy habits among your colleagues and create a happier and more balanced work environment.
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