Workplace Wellness is a billion€ industry, but the industrial workers are the few to participate, even when they are the case study and/or satisfaction surveys targets.
Nowadays, having a corporate wellness program is an investment and more valued by the business partners and customers. On the other side, it reduces the rate of workplace injuries, sick days and the insurance costs. It also promotes teams’ engagement, their healthier lifestyle and these will be reflected on the performance and productivity, significantly.

Getting employees involved and committed with the wellness program is not easy. To gain more engagement, first you must know your employees and organise the program according to their needs (like weight loss, mental health, diabetes), shifts and even physical limitations.

Once you have established what programs to implement based on your employees you can begin the process of implementation. Remember that manufacture workers are physical “hands on the job” so you need to bring the program to them.

You can print and deliver to each one, but is important to promote a wellness meeting and have all the programs displayed and visible in a common area. Onsite programs need to include exams, medical appointments and short wellness meetings to keep all on track.
Besides that, is key to promote wellness education and tips, such as nutrition best-practices, physical exercises, breathing exercises, etc. These can be displayed in poster frames at hallways, near to time clock, breakout and lunch areas.

Here’s some initiatives that are easy to promote:

• Implement a daily 7 minute stretching: Whether at the start of every shift or at different times throughout the day, it can be short and effective. It can focus on the neck, fingers, arms and torso for example. It will prevent and reduce injuries related to the repetitive work.
• Host a bi-annual day event led by national-class expert: invite top instructors on nutrition, fitness, sleep or meditation to live or virtual conferences, classes and consulting.
• Encourage team fitness challenges: there’s a lot of challenges like: 30-day weight loss, squat till you drop, 8 Glasses of Water per day or 10.000 step by day - that you can go forward with. In addition, social interaction increases a likelihood of behavior changes. Use a Score board to show the results and award points for adopting healthier habits.
• Have walking meetings: instead of having the brief meetings all seating in a room, allow your employees to have these short meetings outside, avoiding sedentarism to those who spend all say sitting or doing the same movements. Walking can improve the generation of ideas.
• Provide accessibility to healthy food: order healthy snacks to your vending machines and introduce meat-free day providing additional veggies options or even create a small discount for healthier food choices (often considered more expensive).
• Create a “high-five” board: Create cutouts with each employee’s name on it and paste it to a magnet. Then buy a whiteboard and put all the names up on it. Leave some dry-erase markers out so people can call-out another team member for something positive they did.

Build a positive culture of health and change the behavior’s, encouraging and engaging your employees to a healthier and happier lifestyle.
This investment will increase individual and collective performance and productivity indicators and reduce injuries and sick days.