18 Employee Wellness Incentives

Health issues are a significant concern in the corporate world, with good reason. Employee well-being can directly impact work performance, as poor mental and physical health leads to less productivity and engagement. Implementing corporate wellness programs and incentives can help your company combat this challenge.

Employee wellness incentives can help you instill a healthier lifestyle in employees and cultivate a sense of community in the work environment. Here are 18 employee wellness incentives for employees in your organization.

1. Paid Leave for Vacation

Employees can become so wrapped up in maintaining high efficiency, meeting deadlines and taking care of their families that they forget to take care of themselves. This can severely impact your employees’ work-life balance, leading to less productivity and possible burnout. It may even cause unwanted mental and physical health issues.

Encourage your employees to indulge in some me-time by giving them paid leave. When an employee meets or goes beyond their performance goals, gift them a vacation or a few days off as an employee wellness incentive. This is an exciting benefit for employees and allows them to come back to work rejuvenated and ready to continue producing excellent results. You may even gift them with holiday wellness essentials like sunscreen and hand sanitizers or antibacterial wipes for travel safety.

2. Employee Celebration and Recognition Events

Some employee wellness incentives are excellent for enhancing engagement and productivity. One of these incentives involves hosting an event to celebrate employee accomplishments. This is a great way to show employees you appreciate the work they produce. Host this event annually, bi-annually or quarterly, depending on the engagement within your company, and offer awards and recognition to all the top-performing workers, teams and departments.

You can ensure that everyone feels appreciated by gifting all attendees with promotional items they can use every day to remind them of their achievements, such as coffee, mugs, tumblers, tote bags and ornaments. This program will also remind team members to continue motivating each other to reach new heights to be mentioned during the event.

3. Implement an On-Site Fitness Center

One challenge of long work hours is that once workers are done for the day, they lack the energy to do any other physical activity. This can negatively affect your employees’ health and elevate their chances of getting sick when their physical wellness is low. If you have the means, invest in a workplace wellness room to improve your employees’ physical health.

Renovate any spacious room in the workplace that no one uses and allow employees to use this space to exercise, meditate and relax during work hours whenever they need to re-energize. You may even add a table in the corner or side of the room where employees can hydrate themselves with juice or water. Accessorize them with the necessary equipment like reusable drinkware and coasters.

4. Create Employee Activity Clubs

If you want to add to your on-site fitness center to ensure employees feel encouraged to use it, establish an employee activity club. This club can encourage physical fitness at least once a week and may prove to be one of the most effective employee wellness incentives. This can include a wide variety of physical activities, from bike riding clubs to regular walks, and can be an exciting way to promote an active lifestyle and foster community among colleagues.

5. Offer Free Memberships

Do you have a lack of space or budget for an in-office fitness room? Fortunately, there are other ways to promote physical health in the workplace. Issue your employees free memberships to fitness clubs or online gym services if they prefer to work out at home. You may even offer employees other wellness memberships that provide access to healthy food items, meditation apps, health coaches and health savings accounts.

6. Address Stress in the Workplace

Another great employee wellness incentive is to show employees you are aware of and understand the stress they experience in the workplace. Hold a workshop or meeting to address stress and ask employees to express their concerns and issues so that the relevant professionals can find ways to improve the work environment and work processes. This can also help you improve employee retention.

These meetings also create the perfect opportunity to gift employees promotional wellness items such as stress monitoring cards, spa kits and relaxation kits to promote personal care. You even find it useful to provide individual or group counseling to employees who need professional support to improve their mental health.

7. Hold an Exercise Competition

Create some time for employees to take part in in-office company exercise competitions. Have teams or departments work together to compete against other teams in activities like sports events and other physical activities. These friendly competitions offer a fantastic opportunity for employees to bond and work together outside of work tasks. If you have any remote teams, you might also create virtual exercise challenges, such as wellness app competitions, step tracking and virtual workouts.

You can also foster employee engagement by providing winners with branded prizes such as promotional water bottles and drawstring bags or tote bags they can use for every occasion.

8. Gift Company Merchandise

Company merchandise can help employees officially feel like part of the company, and they can be motivational as incentives. Company merchandise is also beneficial to the company because it raises brand awareness when employees wear or use these items outside of the workplace.

Some branded items you might offer employees as incentives or competition prizes include headphones, travel mugs, power banks and keyrings. These employee wellness incentive gifts are a great way to boost morale and encourage employees to win in events.

9. Encourage Health Assessments With Cash Prizes

Encourage employees to take health assessments and on-site screening and offer them valuable cash prizes or coupons as a reward. Corporate wellness programs like these will get employees lining up to take their assessments. There are so many valuable ways to incorporate these prizes. Some examples include:

• A reduction in health care contributions for taking health assessments.
• A cash incentive for following a health action plan and an extra cash prize for encouraging a partner or spouse to do the same.
• A discount on medical premiums for participating in a certified cessation program.
• Discounts on healthy food selections in the cafeteria.
• Coupons for healthy food choices at the supermarket.

10. Offer Financial Counseling

Fifty-seven percent of employees state that financial issues are the source of their stresses. This financial stress can lead to unhealthy sleep patterns and poor mental and physical health, ultimately affecting productivity and efficiency at work. To improve your employees’ well-being, start offering financial counseling and advice services.

These financial incentives will improve motivation and focus during work hours and enhance their overall well-being. With trustworthy financial advice, your employees will feel more relaxed and produce the quality results you hired them for.

11. Hand Out Workout Gear and Clothes

Workplace wellness programs only feel complete with the correct wellness incentives. Complement your wellness program with workout gear and other active accessories to further motivate your employees to take action. If you plan to address the importance of staying active to maintain physical and mental health, offer your employees promotional sports and activewear like t-shirts, sweatpants, zip jackets and hats.

12. Encourage Healthy Lunches and Snacks

Help your employees feel empowered to make healthy choices by ensuring company cupboards, fridges and snack stations mostly contain nutritious foods and snacks such as nuts and pretzels.

Since employees spend most of their day at work, this is a great way to encourage a healthy diet, allowing employees to improve their work performance and productivity levels. This can also serve as a financial incentive since employees can spend less on lunch and snacks, reducing their financial stress.

13. Create a Wellness Challenge

Workplace wellness challenges encourage employees to adopt healthier habits that reduce the chances of long-term health issues. This also poses an exciting chance for employees to encourage their loved ones to do the same. While physical wellness challenges might come to mind first, it’s equally important to implement mental health wellness challenges because they can help reduce the effects of stress, depression, anxiety and loneliness, which may directly affect your employee’s work performance.

Here are a few examples of wellness challenges you can implement:

• Walk or bike to work
• Drink more water
• Start a journal
• Support small businesses and NGOs
• Vegan Mondays
• Meditate
• 10,000 steps a day
• Take the stairs

Some great ways to encourage participation include providing prizes for challenges you can track, offering promotional notebooks or pens to get started on journaling or handing out one-liter water bottles.

14. Arrange a Meeting or Workshop to Track Wellness Goals and Progress

One of the most effective employee wellness programs is those that involve tracking wellness goals. Doing so encourages employees to actively pursue their goals and feel motivated by their progress.

For example, you may arrange a regular meeting where employees share their well-being goals for the next month, and once that time has passed, employees can gather for the meeting again to discuss their progress, what worked for them and what needs improvement. Employees may even share a few tips and encouragement with other attendees. This is an excellent strategy for keeping employees motivated and allowing team members to connect better.

15. Enhance Workplace Health and Safety

Another great employee wellness incentive is to make the workplace a safer environment. You can promote a safe and healthy work environment by adding various safety equipment around the office.

For example, you can place hand sanitizer stands in the more spacious or fuller areas of the company building, and place masks and small bottles of hand sanitizer in each room in case any workers feel unwell. You may even gift workers with safety whistles, reflective safety vests or glowsticks for those who work in construction or hazardous environments.

These practices will help ensure your employees feel safe and more at ease in the workplace, allowing them to focus on the task at hand rather than feeling clouded by stress.

16. Create an On-Site Gardening Space

Gardening is a beneficial activity that can help reduce stress and improve well-being. Implementing this activity at work will provide employees with a safe space to relax and let go of their worries for a moment. Employees can connect with nature and engage in taking care of plants, giving them an extra sense of fulfillment.

If you know any employees who particularly love gardening, they might appreciate it if you assigned them to take care of the gardening space. You can also reward each gardener with a branded planter set of their own to keep at their desk or take home.

17. Provide an On-site Childcare Facility

Some employees with families or young children may not have someone to take care of their children while at work. Some may even need to leave their children at school or daycare for longer hours because they work late. This can often add to an employee’s stress and cause them to lose productivity during work hours.

Providing an on-site childcare facility can be more convenient for these employees, and it allows them to be at peace knowing their personal responsibilities are taken care of. You can decorate this space with various games and puzzles to keep children entertained. This wellness program shows that you care about your employees who have families and lets those employees restore their work-life balance.

18. Create a Rest Room

Did you know that a daily 30-minute nap can improve employee productivity? Encourage your team to take a nap when they need an energy boost. You can do this by creating a designated napping space separate from the work area. You may even provide them with eye masks to encourage rest.

Get Your Employee Wellness Incentive Gifts From ePromos

Employee wellness programs are an integral part of fostering a healthy and supportive work environment. It can also boost employee and business performance, making it essential to consider the ideas we provided in this guide.

At ePromos, we have various wellness-related items to choose from. As a promotional products provider, we’re ready to brand the products of your choosing on our website to help you build brand awareness, reward employees and attract more consumers. For exciting employee wellness incentives that lead to improved employee engagement, we invite you to browse our selection of wellness-related items and contact our team for more information today.