Workplace wellness is taking on creative new forms as companies aim to improve employee health, boost engagement and retention, and cultivate positive company culture. From biohacking to nature walks, organizations are getting innovative with their “work wellness” programs and exploring fresh approaches to support their people holistically at work.
Rethinking Workplace Wellness
Traditional workplace wellness focused narrowly on physical health and incentivizing healthy behaviors. While exercise challenges, health risk assessments, and wearable fitness trackers have value, companies are realizing that a more creative, whole-person approach is needed. This recognizes that employee well-being encompasses much more than just physical health. It also includes mental, emotional, financial, and social health.
Forward-thinking companies understand that these aspects of life and work are all connected. Supporting work wellness programs now means fostering career development, recognition, work-life balance, financial security, belonging, and mattering, in addition to fitness. More and more, they recognize the value of directly cultivating meaning, creativity, resilience, empowerment, and community at work.
Biohacking for Performance and Wellness
On the more experimental end of the spectrum, some companies are encouraging biohacking – changing lifestyle and adopting certain technologies to enhance physical and mental performance.
The idea is that analytics from these devices help employees optimize certain lifestyle factors, behaviors, and habits to achieve better productivity, health, and wellbeing. However, there are still open questions regarding how much access employers should have to such sensitive employee data. There are also concerns about how an over-focus on quantified metrics can negatively impact holistic wellness.
Nature-Based Wellness Initiatives
Other organizations are taking cues from research that shows how beneficial nature is for health and performance. Introducing biophilic design elements like plants, natural lighting, landscape murals, or wood finishes can help reduce stress, improve focus and creativity, and encourage movement.
Companies are also subsidizing nature retreats where employees can immerse in the wilderness, practice mindfulness or yoga, and form deeper social bonds with colleagues. Some firms have built dedicated wellness spaces with greenery, sunlight, and garden views to provide respite. Others organize workplace nature walks to promote movement and attention restoration.
Bonding with nature aligns with the growing priority companies place on mental health and work-life balance. With remote and hybrid work, facilitating outdoor excursions also helps unite distributed teams and sparks innovation through informal social collisions. Scientific evidence confirms that even micro-doses of nature access during the workday enlivens employees.
Community Building and Collective Care
Wellness initiatives centered on human connections, personal growth, and social belonging also aim to meet yearnings exacerbated by the pandemic’s social isolation.
This sense of collective care and leaning on each other for support represents an antidote to cultures celebrating grit and grind. It’s the understanding that personal wellness and business growth happen through human relationships, not just individual effort and sacrifice.
Coaching and Self-Directed Learning
Rather than prescribe wellness solutions, forward-looking companies also empower employee self-directedness. Access to health and career coaches, whether virtual, on-site, or external, helps employees set their own development goals. Some firms utilize mobile apps so employees can select personalized wellbeing activities from a diverse menu.
Others provide free self-study resources, everything from planners to workshops on purpose & creativity, or even extra “focus Fridays” where employees control their calendars.
Physical Spaces to Optimize Wellbeing
When designing workspaces and offices, companies also consider how built environments impact wellness across physical, mental, and social domains. Standing desks, ergonomic chairs, adjustable lighting, and open staircases all promote healthy movement and posture variety. Dedicated quiet spaces allow focus, while multi-use common areas enable collaboration and bonding between teams. Plants and natural elements engage biophilia, reducing stress. Exterior views, sunlight exposure, and air quality also boost mental acuity and emotional outlook over the course of a day.
Some firms even optimize airflow, aromas, acoustic environments, and chromatic stimulation for sensory wellbeing.
While distributed work is here to stay, offices can still provide sanctuary from commute and home distractions. Intentionally designed physical spaces allow employees to regularly connect, re-energize their minds, and tend to their wellbeing needs while doing focused work.
Better Metrics for Wellness Success
Traditional wellness programs rely heavily on lowering insurance premiums or health expenditures to determine ROI. However, many forward-thinking companies now focus on new metrics that better capture program impact across interrelated aspects of wellness.
Qualitative assessments from self-reporting and feedback sessions also evaluate if employees feel supported. Overall, a blend of holistic metrics, rather than just health cost reduction, paints a better picture of how workplace wellness initiatives are performing.
Evolving Wellness for the Future
The narrow view of workplace wellness as just physical health is giving way to a more progressive and multi-dimensional approach. Companies realize that true employee wellbeing requires attending to the full spectrum of human needs – physical, emotional, social, creative, and spiritual.
And rather than prescribe rigid programs, they’re taking cues from behavioral science to nudge healthier choices, empowering workers with agency and resources for self-directed care. Expect more creativity moving forward as organizations experiment with leveraging data, technology, space design, and human community to help employees thrive holistically.
The future workplace must sustainably foster meaning, energy, and human flourishing just as much as business results. Because when companies look after their people, growth follows.
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