Workplace Wellness Trends to Watch in 2017

Many businesses are realising the importance of striving to deliver a modern health and wellbeing programme to their health-conscious employees that represent a mix of 5 different generations.
Here are the top 5 trends to consider if you are looking to spend some time and money on the Wellbeing Strategy in your workplace.

1.       Not doing Wellbeing becomes costly

Employee wellbeing needs to be at the heart of business strategy — with the cost of not doing this being crippling in terms of both time and goodwill. Tying the goals of the wellbeing programme to business objectives ensures their long-term success and goes a long way in gaining corporate buy-in and approval. Workplace wellbeing also becomes critical employee benefits for attracting top talent.

2.       Digitalisation of the Wellbeing Programmes

We continue seeing the trend towards more digital workplaces — be that through collaborative communication tools, the encroachment of wearable technology into the office or digital learning.
There are more tools available to support your Wellbeing Programme and make it available for a diverse and geographically spread group of employees, including mobile and home workers. Wearables, mobile apps, digital learning and communication platforms are all coming to market to assist you.

3.     Wellbeing Learning

There are all sorts of web-based tools and mobile first applications that can help employees access just what they need to know, when they need to know it.  Learning and development has become a science of mental and psychological enablement. Wellbeing is a new Learning trend and it is closely linked with performance. With the incredible expanse of wellbeing knowledge that employees need to be resilient, mentally alert and physically healthy— it is a mission critical advantage now.

4.     Increasing Innovation

Wellbeing is still overlooked by many CEO’s as a critical tool for performance and sustainability. The rapid progression of the Health Sciences, Neuroscience and Technology makes Wellbeing a fast-growing field of Human Enablement. Exploring the latest trends in the field of Wellbeing and bringing them to your workplace can provide businesses with a competitive advantage that is difficult to imitate.

5. Dealing with Key Issues:

There are key workplace wellbeing issues that you cannot ignore according to CIPD.
– Things are getting worse with Obesity and Diabetes; each condition links to numerous associated serious health risks – both physical and mental – so it is worth working to prevent these conditions.  

– The impact of Stress is now at an all-time high, with the CIPD’s 2016 Absence Management Survey naming stress as the leading cause of long-term absence (53 per cent) and the second-highest cause of short-term absence (47 per cent).

 – You need to give people the tools to look after themselves to avoid Back Pain and Musculoskeletal issues.  It helps to be aware of the latest thinking and best practice. The popularity of desk-based stretches is on the rise, for good reason.

 – The World Health Organization rates Sedentary lifestyles (or ‘physical inactivity’) as the world’s fourth-biggest killer. Effective measures include sit-stand desks, stretching and exercise, encouraging employees to walk over to colleagues, standing meetings and lunchtime walks. Ultimately this problem is fundamentally cultural, so employers really can make a difference. 

Our New Digital Employee Wellbeing Club is coming soon to help you embed Wellbeing in a cost-efficient and innovative way.

Check us out here  https://www.unicornenlight.com/