The holidays can be a difficult time for employee wellness. Many people feel that they have worked hard to maintain their health throughout the year, so they deserve to relax a little bit. Of course, holiday parties often have a lot of unhealthy food and drinks that people can consume. Many people feel that, even if they are on a diet, the holidays should be an exception. As an employer, it is not your job to make employees stick to their diets. However, employee wellness does affect their work performance. You don’t want your employees not to feel well due to eating badly. Here are three easy ways to promote healthy habits during the holidays:

The Temptation for Employees to Break Healthy Habits

A recent survey shows that 64% of employees claim stress has negatively impacted their work. Stress is just as deeply connected to the holidays as is unhealthy eating. Of course, stress and unhealthy eating are also connected to each other. Many people will stress eat junk food. During the holidays, much junk food is often readily available. These temptations for employees to break healthy habits by not managing their stress and by eating junk food are culpable for a significant amount of lost work productivity. November and December are often the least productive months, and it is easy to see why.

1. Host a fitness challenge

There are numerous ways in which employers can motivate their staff to stay healthy by encouraging fitness challenges. Frequently, we’ve heard large companies such as Google going a notch higher to build gyms for their staff members. While this can be a great way to encourage workplace fitness, it is hardly attainable for most businesses.

If your company is small, then chances are your budget won’t allow you spend a lot of money on keeping your employees fit. However, some simple ways will help you achieve this goal. For instance, positioning printers far away from desks and championing for walking meetings will help your employees to keep fit.

2. Gamify Health Choices

Some people need to be pushed to meet their goals. If you find out your employees are involved in unhealthy living habits and do not seem to worry getting away from such lifestyle, you will have to make living healthy more attractive. The best way to do this is to gamify the process.

A lot of people thrive where there is competition. Telling your employees to get one hour of exercise every weekday is one thing and telling them that the one who gets to do this on consecutive days gets rewarded is another. You will have to come up with challenges and games both individual and team-based – this will ensure your employees get motivated. Additionally, such games will help build a sense of teamwork among your employees.

3. Support employee’s mental health

Every business needs to adopt a proper Employee and Family Assistance Program to cater to the employees’ needs when it comes to wellness services as well as psychological counselling. In addition to undergoing counselling, employees and their dependents will have access to legal, financial as well as nutritional consultation, e-learning courses, and work-life services.

Contact your Advisor or one of our Benefits Consultants today to find out how we can help you achieve your employee wellness goals by providing a custom benefits plan.