Employer Wellness

• Make sure that your building’s stairwells are clean, attractive and safe, and post signs encouraging staff members to use the stairs.
• Establish a wellness newsletter or intranet.
• Encourage the Activity Tracker and promote employees to track their physical exercise every week.
• Be creative, and make the most of the workspace you have. For example, mark off a safe walking path inside or around the building. You might also set up a training circuit, highlighting features of the worksite such as stairs.
• Offer physical exercise opportunities at different times to accommodate night-, shift-, and part-time workers.
• For employees in remote or satellite offices, offer equal access to key pushes via the intranet. Adapt challenges to suit their environment and take advantage of local facilities and resources.
• Make physical exercise available to workers with special needs. Adapt information and activities for any employee who are visually impaired or physically disabled as well as for individuals who speak English as a second language.
• Educate workers about physical exercise using information from reputable sources such as the Alberta Centre for Active Living.
• Offer facilities that invite worksite physical activity. Possibilities include bike racks, physical activity room, change rooms with lockers and showers, and safe and attractive grounds for walking.
• Have walking gatherings.
• Promote staff members to walk to co-workers’ offices rather than e-mailing or phoning.
• Set up a stretching room. This low-cost plan requires only a room, stretching mats, stability balls and medicine balls. Put up posters that show stretches and exercises.
• Offer incentives/rewards such as shoe bags, ball caps, T-shirts or water bottles to reward employee participation.
• Hand out pedometers for three months, so that employees have the potential to find out how many steps they usually take and how much exercise they need to add to get basic health benefits.
• Set aside space for employees to plant and maintain a flowerbed or garden at the workplace. Use any resulting produce for meetings and potluck lunches or donate it to charity.
• Plan a workplace wellness fair.
• Hire a qualified fitness specialist to design and manage an worksite fitness facility.
• Supply workers with active wear that displays the business logo.