Your employees should be seen as more than just workers. As a business manager, you should show that you care about your employee’s health and well-being. This will help to motivate them, improve productivity, and minimize sickness. There are many ways you can impact the health and well-being of your employees. Let’s have a look at some of them below:
Allowing Time For Rest
When you work your employees into the ground and don’t consider giving them proper time off the rest it can be demoralizing and cause your employees to want to look for work elsewhere. Although you may need to manage leave at busy times, you should try to give your employees time off when they need it. Rather than saying no straightaway think about putting towards the team to say that ‘x’ amount of people have requested time off, can anyone swap days as we need cover? For example, at Christmas time a lot of people may request time off work but you need to have at least a Skellington staff in.
Some companies are now allowing their employees to have unlimited paid leave. This has been proven to lower stress levels, reduce absences, and establish trust between employees and employers. You will, of course, need to plan carefully and you will also need to make sure that people are taking some leave and not working all the time. The last thing you need is for them to overwork themselves and have a poor work/life balance.
Offer Flexible Working Hours
This is something that has become more and more common. Unless have a production line to run or need to be in an office/store to serve customers there is no reason you can’t be as flexible as possible for your employees when it comes to the hours that they work. As long as they are doing the job they need to and make the effort to pop into a weekly meeting then allow them to work the hours that suit them. All you need to do is lay out some guidelines. For example, you could say that people are allowed to bank an extra 48 hours to go on some leave for a holiday without using annual leave but not allow them to go over the allowance. You could also set a debit limit of say 16 hours and allow them to owe a small amount of time.
Another way of being flexible with your working hours is allow your employees to choose which times they are working. For instance, if you have someone who works better during school hours or in the evening, allow them to do this. Just ask them to have a catch-up with the team once a week.
Provide Them With Information
A great thing you can do for your employees is to educate them on where they can get help if they need it. For example, if you have employees who are struggling with mental health you could leave some quality leaflets out in the staff room that signposts them to where they can go to get help. Sometimes people don’t like to talk openly about their health but that doesn’t mean you can’t show them where they can go or what they can do. Another way you can do this is to send an employee newsletter that provides useful contact information for medical professionals.
Offer Cycle To Work
Many businesses have now started to offer a cycle-to-work scheme to their employees. It has many benefits for the mental and physical health of your employees by encouraging them to get daily exercise. As well as a cycle-to-work scheme you could also offer bike loans, discounts on sports equipment, and provide cycle safety training. It could be a good idea to offer a reward for employees who cycle to work a certain number of days in a month. If they hit a goal they could get a bike bonus in their wage.
Offer Vouchers
Another great way to support your employee’s health is to contribute towards it. This doesn’t mean that you are covering medical bills, however, you could offer vouchers for things like eye tests. This is especially important if your team is always working on the computer. Long-term use of the computer can affect your eyesight.
These are just some of the ways you can look after the health of your employees. Do you think you will implement any of them? It would be great to hear about it in the comments.
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