Morning commutes always seem to be a struggle. Dealing with rush hour traffic, insufficient parking, faulty alarm clocks and last-minute emergencies tends to start the day off poorly and contribute to unnecessary stress. Besides these basic struggles, getting up extra early to sneak in a pre-sunrise yoga class or a quick morning jog can sometimes seem like an impossible feat. There is an exception, however. All of the employees that bike to work all seem arrive bright-eyed, alert and ready to face the day. Before they even get to their desks, they've gotten in some exercise, soaked up a little sunlight and avoided a dreaded highway commute. Today, on National Bike to Work Day, we salute those employees with a list of our 10 favorite reasons to consider commuting by bike. 

You may be aware that your staff is rarely hitting the magical 8-hour mark for their sleep schedules. While your employees' out-of-office time is their own business, a lack of adequate sleep could be affecting your company in the long run. Those cubicle cat naps and overall on-the-job sleepiness cost employers about $100 billion in lost productivity, health care costs and employee absences, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

For more than 30 years, the only option for the flu vaccine has been trivalent; that is, designed to protect against three strains of the influenza virus. Last year, for the first time, a new quadrivalent vaccine was introduced that provides protection against four varieties of the virus. This year will be the first time the quad vaccine is widely available, with the option to get it in the form of either a traditional shot or a nasal spray. 

We think it’s time to cast off the diet mentality, and today’s nationally recognized “No Diet Day” is the perfect opportunity to kick start a healthy, permanent lifestyle change. There’s no need to subject yourself to trendy diets or punishing juice cleanses; and, in fact, most experts would agree that dieting isn’t the best way to lose weight and stay healthy. Instead, we would suggest trying out the principle of “intuitive eating.” 

First coined in 1995 by Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch, “intuitive eating” is an elegant solution to the diet-obsessed culture we live in. This elegantly complex practice trains you to eat based off of your body’s own signals, relying on instinct and intuition in choosing your day-to-day nutrition. It puts you in charge of your meal and doesn’t position food as a good or bad entity. You don’t have to punish yourself for having that slice of cake, and you don’t have to brag about only having a kale salad for lunch.

When the mid-day slump strikes, it's unlikely that you'll be willing to get up out of your office chair and do a set of burpees in the hallway. If you want to get a little fitness routine in and boost your energy, try these subtle suggestions for exercises you can do at your desk without announcing your workout to your cubicle neighbors!

This year, you have more choices than ever for flu vaccines.

The newest available option, the quadrivalent vaccine, offers protection against four strains of flu virus and can be given as a traditional shot or a nasal spray.

With so many varieties of vaccines on the market, it can be difficult to determine which one will work best for you or your workplace.

One of the best ways to incite positive change and create a culture of wellness is to make it simple to be healthy. We’ve found that one of the easiest examples of this is community-supported agriculture, an on-trend delivery model that allows individuals to “subscribe” to a local farm and receive a weekly share of fresh fruits and vegetables. While some people choose to get their share delivered to their house, we’ve seen a lot of companies offer to have the CSA provider drop off the produce at their office. As an employee perk or an optional service, we think it’s one of the best ways a company can provide easy access to healthy, nutritional foods.

Your office has a productivity problem, whether you're aware of it or not. The source of your setbacks doesn't necessarily stem directly from your employees, but from a combination of environmental and cultural factors that interrupt, distract and slow down the efficiency of your workforce. Luckily, there are plenty of solutions to help you get the most out of your employees without resorting to micromanagement, banning the use of the Internet or destroying your staff's work-life balance. 

When people say that the best ideas are often the most simple, I often think they must be referring to Nilofer Merchant. Her TED Talk about walking meetings last year offered us one of the most profound yet straightforward corporate wellness solutions I've ever heard. (If you haven't yet viewed it, click here to watch.) 

You've heard the statistic over and over again: one-third of Americans can be classified as obese. While the ramifications of this data have been explored in terms of our children and our health care costs, we believe that the impact of this information on the workplace deserves extra attention. As a corporate wellness provider, we've seen first-hand that employers can make a difference in the health and lifestyles of their employees. If companies don't start to make this shift in the public consciousness, every employer in America will find themselves paying an even higher cost for workers with a high BMI.