Health and Wellness Leads : Employee Health Promotion Programs: How Your Organization Can Help staff members to Be Active

• Make sure that your building’s stairwells are clean, attractive and safe, and post signs encouraging staff members to use the stairs.
• Develop a wellness newsletter or intranet.
• Encourage the Activity Tracker and advocate employees to track their physical activity every week.
• Be creative, and make the most of the workspace you have. For example, mark off a safe walking path inside or around the building. You might also set up a training circuit, highlighting features of the worksite such as stairs.
• Provide physical activity opportunities at different times to accommodate night-, shift-, and part-time employees.
• For workers in remote or satellite offices, offer equal access to key drives 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 employees 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 gatherings.
• Encourage staff members 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/rewards such as shoe bags, ball caps, T-shirts or water bottles to reward employee participation.
• Loan out pedometers for three months, so that workers 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 gatherings and potluck lunches or donate it to charity.
• Establish a workplace health & wellness fair.
• Hire a certified fitness specialist to create and manage an workplace fitness facility.
• Supply staff members with active wear that displays the corporation logo.