Workplace morale is a huge factor in employee health. It’s also a great predictor of company productivity. While there are a number of long-term company changes you can make to develop a positive company culture, we know those are easier said than done.

Here are a few quick and easy ideas to improve employee morale and create a happy office environment right now.

If you have a wellness program, you should definitely have regular biometric screenings. A staple event at these screenings is a blood test to measure things like cholesterol, glucose and triglycerides. These metrics give employees a baseline to help motivate them toward healthy behaviors. 

If you choose to do an onsite screening event, there are a few different ways to get a blood sample for these types of tests. You can draw blood with a fingerstick, or a venipuncture blood draw.

It’s important to look at the two options carefully and decide which works best for your company. You might want to consider what your employees wanted from wellness when you sought feedback from them (and you should’ve sought feedback!).

Sometimes there’s a fine line between what you should and shouldn’t encourage your employees to do. After all, you’re a part of their work life, so you shouldn’t go traipsing into their personal life too much. That doesn’t mean you can't care about their well-being in all aspects of life. 

So, how do you address something like a healthy diet? Here are some ideas that can help you encourage healthy eating without being too pushy!

Everyone makes mistakes, and that’s just fine. But, when it comes to biometric screenings, why not learn from other people’s mistakes? That way, you can save your precious mistakes for something smaller…like opting for the cheapest (and worst-tasting) coffee for the break room.

Mistake 1: Not Screening Regularly

Regular screenings are what help you to catch health trends among your employees. If you don’t offer health screenings regularly, you won’t be able to measure improvements or stop declines in their tracks. Even though we’d love to see you every single month, we aren’t saying you need screenings quite that often. Aim for one health screening each year so your employees have time to make some adjustments and really see the outcomes of their efforts.

Odds are you’ve heard the hype about Apple’s latest gadget, the Apple Watch. With its release originally scheduled for this week, we thought we’d give you some insight into how the Apple Watch compares to regular wearable fitness trackers when it comes to employee wellness.

Early wearers have provided mixed reviews about the infamous Apple Watch. Does it really stack up as a benefit for the average employee? Take a look at our pre-release analysis.

Financial wellness is an aspect of employee wellness that’s often forgotten. It’s important that employees feel healthy financially for many of the same reasons they should feel healthy physically.

To get started, let’s take a look at what financial wellness means. For an employee, financial wellness includes:

• Minimal feelings of financial stress
• A strong financial foundation (little or no debt, emergency savings and living below their means)
• A plan to follow to meet future financial goals
  

Having a positive culture in your workplace can play a huge role in the well-being of your employees and the quality of the work they do. When designing a wellness program, a lot of times just doing a screening or Health Risk Assessment isn’t enough to make an impact. If you really want to help your employees live healthier lifestyles, you’ll need to create an environment conducive to those choices.

Exercise has benefits no matter what weight someone may be. Overweight? Underweight? Struggling with a healthy diet? Doesn’t matter. Regular exercise will help to improve your health in some way.

Regular physical activity can help you to control your weight and combat health conditions like high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes. It can improve your mood and increase your energy. Exercise can even help you sleep better at night.

Do you get enough zzz’s? Odds are you—and your employees—probably don’t. But what’s the big deal with being a little drowsy at work? There are actually quite a few negative outcomes of sleep deprivation. There are also plenty of things you can do to make sure you have a well-rested workforce.

At Work

Some of the negative consequences of sleep deprivation are seen at the workplace. It’s estimated that fatigue-related production loss is close to $2,000. This is due to mistakes that are made because employees' minds are quite as sharp on fewer hours of sleep.

Are we there yet? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we are just about to the end of the 2014-15 flu season!

We all know that this flu season was an interesting one. With the circulating strains a bit different from that in the virus, we saw a pretty active flu season. Check out the major takeaways from this past flu season.