Company Health and Wellness : Worksite Wellness Programs: How Your Organization Can Help workers to Be Active

• Make sure that your building’s stairways are clean, attractive and safe, and post signs encouraging employees to use the stairs.
• Establish a wellness newsletter or intranet.
• Encourage the Activity Tracker and bolster employees to track their physical exercise every week.
• Be creative, and make the most of the workspace you have. By way of example, mark off a safe walking path inside or around the building. You might also set up a training circuit, highlighting features of the workplace such as stairs.
• Provide physical exercise opportunities at different times to accommodate night-, shift-, and part-time workers.
• For staff members in remote or satellite offices, offer equal access to key pushes via the intranet. Adapt challenges to suit their environment and take advantage of local facilities and resources.
• Make physical exercise available to workers with special needs. Adapt information and activities for any employee who are visually impaired or physically disabled as well as for individuals who speak English as a second language.
• Educate workers about physical activity using information from reputable sources such as the Alberta Centre for Active Living.
• Offer facilities that invite worksite physical exercise. Possibilities include bike racks, exercise room, change rooms with lockers and showers, and safe and attractive grounds for walking.
• Have walking meetings.
• Encourage workers to walk to co-workers’ offices instead of e-mailing or phoning.
• Set up a stretching room. This low-cost initiative requires only a room, stretching mats, stability balls and medicine balls. Put up posters that show stretches and exercises.
• Give incentives such as shoe bags, ball caps, T-shirts or water bottles to reward employee participation.
• Loan out pedometers for three months, so that employees are able to find out how many steps they usually take and how much activity they need to add to get basic health benefits.
• Set aside space for employees to plant and maintain a flowerbed or garden at the workplace. Use any resulting produce for meetings and potluck lunches or donate it to charity.
• Plan a workplace wellness and health fair.
• Hire a qualified fitness specialist to design and manage an onsite fitness facility.
• Supply employees with active wear that displays the organization logo.