Canadian HR Reporter

CANADIAN HR REPORTER May 30, 2016 FEATURES 17 WELLNESS Wellness isn't just about gym memberships Workplace wellness 'an engagement solution more than a health solution' By Liz Bernier P roviding some sort of well- ness benefit is pretty much par for the course among top employers these days — the challenge is finding the most effective way to get employees engaged. Providing a gym membership, fitness allowance or any other passive source of support for em- ployee wellness is a great idea, says Jackie Riley, principal at Riley Wellness Consulting in Toronto. "Employers need to know that, on the spectrum of everything that they can do, doing some- thing is always better than doing nothing." If an employer is providing gym memberships, it deserves kudos for that — but that in isolation may not provide the most bang for the buck, says Riley. "For workplace wellness to re- ally have some teeth, to really marry up with engagement in a meaningful way, providing for workplace wellness to occur while at work and walking hand in hand with other engagement strategies is really important." Unlike the United States where workplace wellness is looked at as a solution to health insur- ance costs, Canada is not looking through exactly that lens, says Riley. "But what I'm seeing more and more now is workplace wellness really being an engagement so- lution, even more than a health solution. And because it's an engagement solution, because it marries with an entire engage- ment strategy, it has to happen in the workplace." Usually with a wellness pro- gram, the objective is to increase the well-being of the employee, to increase participation, energy and loyalty to the company, says Ka- trina DeAngelis, workplace well- ness consultant in Toronto. "e problem with giving them, let's say, an allowance for a gym membership… (is) they're still spending the money on it but the results are not the same," she says. "e positive to having (health initiatives) during the workday or even in the workplace… is that they're getting the results because people can actually use them — and the employer is still spending likely the same amount of money on it. And the added benefit is after the workout or after the workshop, motivation is likely to increase, and then they're going back to work and their productiv- ity is going to increase as well. "Out-of-house exercise pro- grams, the return on investment is not going to be the same." "In-house, they're likely to use it and it's more of a wellness ini- tiative rather than just an added benefit (they may or may not use)." Wellness and success go hand in hand, says Jordan Cieciwa, re- gional manager at Bridges Health in Winnipeg. "If you want employees that are able to show you their best, they have to be (healthy)." Incorporating walking into the workday, learning the basics of yoga, stretching, learning how to breathe, to relax are all great steps employees can take — and em- ployers can encourage that. "It's undoing the day sitting in front of a computer, it's undoing those repetitive motions… so you get the stress relief from that," says Cieciwa. "It is not the employer's responsibility to make sure you're fit — that's you after and around after work, but it is your employ- er's responsibility to make sure you are healthy." And employers need to think about mental wellness as well, he says. "From a mental health stand- point, employees (should be) al- lowed to walk away from their desk. You should feel that you can walk away from any job that you're doing — safely — in order to de-stress," he says. "Manufac- turing jobs aside, there shouldn't be anything in this world that we feel strapped to in the sense that if we step away for even a second, the whole thing falls apart." Creating a wellness culture A few years ago, employers start- ed to bring in boot camps and workout programs, but what they really need is a different culture, says Cieciwa. "Culture is everything when it comes to wellness, and I be- lieve that's been the thing that's been missed. We've got too many people who are trying to solve the problem with programs… all that needs to change is the culture of the business," he says. Some of these programs have the unintended consequence of preaching to the choir — the only uptake is by the employees who are already fit. "I'm healthy. I'm not the issue. I'm not the person who's going to take 27 sick days this year be- cause of health issues… so giving me more benefits doesn't really do anything. It just makes me health- ier, and that person who's (not as fit) feels more alienated," he says. "What we're doing is creating a bigger gap." People spend most of their time at work, if they work in a bricks and mortar workplace. So it's the location where they have the best opportunity to live well because it's most of their day, says Riley. "Seeing your colleagues, both those that you support if you hap- pen to be a manager or those that support you if you are managed by someone, seeing everyone engage somehow in workplace wellness is really important — and probably more important than throwing money at a gym membership that may or may not get used outside business hours," she says. It's about the triple win: How's it going to be great for the employer, employee and the wider commu- nity? One program, for example, saw the employer arrange for staff to walk dogs from a nearby animal shelter during lunch, says Riley. "It really brought people to- gether over a common love for animals. With something like that, it doesn't have to be difficult to in- tegrate workplace wellness oppor- tunities into the day," she says. "It can be really, really simple. And I think providing time for it doesn't necessarily have to be new time. People have x number of minutes for lunch and x number of minutes for breaks in a day, so there doesn't have to be new time above and beyond what's already legislated for, what's already cus- tomary in that workplace. It can be integrated into what that work- place culture already sees as cus- tomary for a break." When you're creating a corpo- rate culture, it's so important to integrate the wellness aspect of it, says DeAngelis. "And when people think well- ness, they think a lot of the time, 'gym.' But it's more than that. It's about creating a culture that al- lows you to be creative and al- lows you to take that time out of your busy day and not think, 'Oh my gosh, I don't have time to go meditate for 15 minutes' or 'I don't have time to go do yoga.' It's about creating a culture that encourages it." "Culture is everything when it comes to wellness... and that's been missed." Credit: Dean Drobot (Shutterstock)

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