A positive worksite wellness culture can be important for your staff's physical, emotional, and mental well-being.

When your employees’ health is a priority, your workplace becomes more efficient and productive.

The office becomes a place that respects the time, talents, and lives of the individuals who work there, with clearly established roles and responsibilities.

While many wellness programs will brag about ROI and throw seemingly impressive statistics, just creating a culture that values wellness is enough to reduce sick days and health care costs.

Traditional team-building activities tend to send employees heading to the hills.

But we're confident that there are plenty of ways to establish relationships with your coworkers without an awkward icebreaker activity or out-of-place craft project.

Creating those bonds among staff members is about more than just having a cool company culture; employees report that when they have friends at work, their job is more fun, enjoyable, worthwhile, and satisfying. In fact, a recent Gallup survey found that close work friendships boost employee satisfaction by 50%, and people with a best friend at work are seven times more likely to engage fully in their tasks. 

Now that the weather is warmer, we think there are even more ways you can get employees to participate in creative, engaging activites. Here are eight of our favorite suggestions: 

If you're a human resources professional, the odds are that you've been in charge of developing or growing your company's workplace wellness program. While it may seem like a natural fit to task the HR team to deal with employee health details, we often find that our clients haven't really determined where the responsibility for their wellness program lies. The approaches vary among different companies and industries, with some focusing on personal responsibility or others opting to hire a third-party vendor. 

We believe in creating a culture of wellness and cultivating positive, permanent lifestyle changes. That's why we were beyond thrilled to hear that one of our longtime clients, InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), was launching the new EVEN™ Hotels. This brand offers wellness-minded travelers a destination where they can maintain their healthy lifestyles while on the road. Whether they're on a work trip or enjoying a bit of PTO, these hotels are built with the guests' health in mind. 

Any employee's ears would perk up at the idea of unlimited vacation days. This doesn't come as much of a surprise when you contrast the dream of endless time off with the idea that Americans are working more than ever, averaging more than 48 hours a week according to the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development. 

With fluctuating insurance costs and an economy that’s still in the recovery process, odds are that you’re under a bit of pressure to try and keep health care costs down and productivity high. While we don’t have any clients experiencing problems with high rates of absenteeism, we do believe that encouraging healthy habits and managing stress is a win-win for employer and employee. With that in mind, we’ve compiled this list of seven easy ways your company can support the wellness of its staff and cut down on sick days. 

We’ve come a long way since the standard pedometer. From smartphone apps that can tell you how healthy your food is to a wristband that tracks your activity and sleeping patterns, the “wearable wellness” trend shows no signs of slowing down. According to ABI Research, 13 million wearable devices will be integrated into corporate wellness plans over the next five years – an impressive jump, when you consider that less than 200,000 are currently incorporated.

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.