Summertime is just around the corner! With longer days and beautiful weather, it’s no surprise that work might not always be your employees’ top priority throughout the season. In fact, 25% of people report feeling less productive in the office over the summer months. That’s why it’s crucial for employers to learn and implement some new strategies for successful summertime management.

While productivity and engagement are two critical factors for most employers, it’s important to realize that employees deserve a little fun during this lively season. Below, we share seven tips to help employers keep employees productive and engaged over the summer – without sacrificing the excitement the season has to bring.

When was the last time you evaluated how your workplace wellness program is running? If you haven’t dusted off the cobwebs in a while, there’s no better time than now to re-evaluate and do some major spring cleaning! There are a few ways you can tell if you have an ailing corporate wellness program on your hands.

First, if you have low participation, your program is most likely struggling. The most obvious way to evaluate your wellness program is to crunch the numbers. If there are only a few people that have even signed up for your program, it’s probably time to make a few changes. 

Second, if you have decent participation, but aren’t seeing any health behavior changes, your program might need some adjustments. High participation and low improvement can mean a few different things. Most likely, it means that your employees are just going through the motions – they aren’t truly engaged in your program. Engagement is what drives results, so it’s important to recognize when you’re missing the mark on that side of your program. 

TotalWellness has some exciting news! We added four new awesome features to our wellness program, Beata. Beata is a turnkey wellness solution powered through a user-friendly portal. Utilizing a wellness portal is an easy way for busy employers to manage an effective workplace wellness program. 

Beata was designed to engage employees, encourage healthy behavior, and boost participation levels. It also helps simplify the overall process of a wellness program for both the employer and the employee. That’s why we consider Beata your “no sweat” wellness portal. It takes out all the hassle and stress of a wellness program so that employers and employees can focus on what’s truly important: employee health and wellness.

We built Beata on the power of positivity. It was designed specifically to help employers empower their employees to live healthier, happier lives. We removed all of the nonsense, and focused solely on features that truly help employees transform into the healthiest version of themselves.

Biometric screenings are a fantastic tool for employers to utilize.

Screenings are an easy way to get employees involved in your workplace wellness initiatives and learn more about their current health status. They provide helpful information for both employers and employees by collecting health data that can be translated into actionable goals. It’s a convenient and free opportunity for employees to take a more active role in their health and gain some motivation to develop healthier habits. 

Typically, a biometric screening consists of a simple finger prick or venipuncture blood draw and measures the following health factors: 

• Body Mass Index (BMI)
• Blood pressure
• Waist circumference
• Glucose
• Total cholesterol
• HDL and LDL cholesterol
• Triglycerides

Offering an annual biometric screening is an essential step in creating a successful employee wellness program. The results provide a baseline for employee health, and employers can use these results to track wellness progress, trends, and changes over time. Most screening providers provide an aggregate report after your company’s screening has been completed. While these reports are beneficial for collecting data, many employers aren’t exactly sure what to do with this data.

A wellness program won’t be successful without any type of behavior change from its employees. Wellness challenges are the core of behavior change, and are essential to any winning workplace wellness program. Hosting regular challenges is a fun, engaging way to help employees practice healthy lifestyle behaviors and create new habits – which can lead to the development of permanent healthy habits. 

Wellness challenges can also be utilized to vamp up your company’s wellness initiatives. In fact, hosting a wellness challenge can:

• Help you climb out of a rut in your program
• Be used to celebrate special events, milestones, or holidays
• Provide some momentum after a new program or campaign launch
• Stimulate engagement by instilling a sense of friendly competition among teams and colleagues

Most wellness challenges don’t usually require a big investment on the employer’s part – which is another reason why they are so appealing. However, sometimes it can be a bit tricky to get employees to participate in a wellness challenge. The key is to promote the challenge with some excitement and motivate employees to get involved for their own benefit. Below are a few ideas to help motivate employees to participate in wellness challenges: 

Being happy is an important aspect of health and wellness.

When you’re not happy, your body feels it. It’s challenging to stay productive and focused, and you’re a lot less likely to make healthy choices when you’re feeling unhappy.

Because happiness is so vital to wellbeing, the United Nations declared March 20^th the International Day of Happiness. It’s a day to recognize and celebrate the importance of happiness in lives of all different people around the globe. 

The International Day of Happiness should remind employers of the value of a happy workplace. Since many Americans spend a good portion of their time in the office, it’s important that they work at a company that prioritizes employee happiness. A principal responsibility of an employer is to create and promote a happy work environment. A happy work environment is not only good for a workforce, but it’s good for the bottom line, too. According to LiveHappy.com, unhappy employees cost employers $300 billion each year in lost productivity.

Wellness coordinators don’t always get the recognition they deserve. They are responsible for a variety of tasks, as well as the preparation and evaluation of wellness initiatives. As a wellness coordinator, your attitude can not only make or break employee participation but can impact how well an employee does throughout the wellness program. Taking a positive, proactive approach to your wellness program can make wellness initiatives more popular and effective.

Being a proactive wellness coordinator means taking action when it comes to your wellness program. A proactive wellness coordinator will reach out to employees, encourage them, and empower them to make healthy changes in their lives. Taking a proactive approach to employee wellness is more effective than a reactive approach for many different reasons:

• Health and wellness is an ongoing process – there is always action to be taken.
• Activity is contagious, so the more effort you put into employee wellness, the more your co-workers will, too.
• A positive, proactive approach sets employees up for success by providing a strong foundation that helps employees develop motivation, excitement, and momentum. 

Employee Appreciation Day falls on Friday, March 2nd this year. If you haven’t taken advantage of celebrating Employee Appreciation Day in the past, now is your chance to do so! Expressing gratitude and letting your employees know you appreciate them is one of the best ways to keep employees engaged and motivated in the workplace. 

However, many employees don’t feel appreciated by their employer or company. A report from Globoforce found that 40% of surveyed employees claimed they weren’t recognized at all over the past year. This is unfortunate because both employees and employers benefit from employee appreciation and recognition. Employees who feel appreciated tend to be more loyal to their company, view their boss as trustworthy, and feel more satisfied with their role. 

If you haven’t planned something special for your employees yet, no need to worry. Check out some of these ideas to show your employees that they are appreciated:

It’s no secret that what you eat significantly impacts your health.

Your diet can either fuel your body or drag you down.

Consuming a diet that is mostly made up of “fake food” (or heavily processed food products) can harm your health with its excessive sugar, calorie, and fat content. By cutting back on fake foods and focusing on a diet filled with real foods, you can reduce your risk of chronic illness, feel more energized, and keep your body happy and healthy.

A new study published in the British Medical Journal gave some new insight on the negative impact that ultra-processed food has on one’s health. A group of French scientists studied the diets of more than 100,000 people and found that eating ultra-processed foods (like cakes, chicken nuggets, instant noodles, and mass-produced bread) put people at a higher risk of developing cancer. A 10% increase in the amount of ultra-processed food consumed was linked to a 12% increase in certain types of cancers. The study also found that processed foods make up about 50% of the average person's diet in several developed countries – which could be contributing to the rising cancer levels.

An increased risk of cancer is just one of the many reasons why heavily processed foods can be dangerous to your health. A diet high in processed foods is also linked to obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, and nutrient deficiency. This is why it’s important to strive for a healthy, balanced diet filled with more real foods and less fake foods.

Engaged and motivated employees are the heart of a successful corporate wellness program. They tend to gain more from their company’s wellness initiatives and serve as an example for other employees in the office. This is why HR professionals and wellness professionals are always on the lookout for new ways to maintain and increase employee engagement throughout the year. 

Keeping employees engaged in your workplace wellness program is no small task. Employees can easily lose steam and motivation once wellness activities become repetitive and unchallenging. And without employee engagement and participation, a wellness program would be worthless.

So, whether you’ve had your wellness program up and running for years or if you’re launching your program for the first time, try out these seven tips to help keep your employees engaged in your wellness program all year long: