October – Canada’s Healthy Workplace Month!

As per the statistics, over the last 15 years, Canadians are working longer hours and finding it hard to balance their work and personal lives. Workplaces have a huge impact on each individual’s health. From here, it was just a baby step for the employers to understand that the employees’ well – being at workplace is a real necessity not just a trend.

More and more employers are determined to provide health and wellness coverage as a tool to attract, retain and engage their employees and also to build a safer and healthier work environment for them.

Did you know?

  • Absenteeism due to work-life conflict cost an estimated $3 billion in Canada per year
  • For every 2 baby boomers that will retire, there is less than 1 person to hire!
  • 55% of 32,000 employees surveyed were not praised in last 3 months
  • Over 10% of employees report a decrease in life satisfaction
  • 60% of Canadian respondents reported that the technical complexity of their jobs had increased of the past year.
  • Poor employee mental health costs the Canadian economy $14.4 billion every year
  • 1.4 million working Canadians are diagnosed with depression

As per Grey Bruce Public Health Unit, there are 5 easy steps to create a Healthier Workplace:

  1. Build commitment – get senior management endorsement and also get the employees involved!
  2. Find out what employees need and want – there are a variety of ways to understand what your employees consider to be important.
  3. Put together a plan based on what your employees want and what you can do. Different people have different needs. It is important to assess needs and interests of employees before implementing the activities.
  4. Put activities in place. Wellness programs should be open to all employees so do not set up the goals too high; it should be challenging enough to make them stretch, but not so far that they break… and in the end it is about having fun together not competing.
  5. Follow up and revise your activities. Evaluating how well the activities met the needs of your employees is important to the success of your workplace initiative. What is working and what isn’t? What can everybody do to make it work? What should be changed?

Try following the above guidelines during this month but don’t restrict your workplace initiatives to just October… Creating and maintaining a healthier workplace is an ongoing process.

Written by: Andreea Dragomir

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