World Well-Being Week: 22 Strategies to Help Employees Thrive

Let World Well-Being Week be the catalyst for improved well-being in your workplace.

The relatively new holiday is celebrated the last week of June each year, this year being June 24-30.

What’s World Well-Being Week About?

The driving forces behind World Well-Being Week are:

• Encouragement and support: The week is meant to serve as a motivational platform, inspiring people to make positive changes in their lives in and out of work.
• Spreading awareness: The week is dedicated to highlighting the significance of well-being in all areas of life and work. It encourages people, employers and communities to prioritize well-being and integrate it into their daily routines and practices. By promoting the concept of holistic health, it aims to foster a broader understanding of well-being beyond physical health. 
• Learning and sharing. The week is meant to provide resources, information and practical tips to help people improve their well-being. That’s where employers come in: Use World Well-Being Week to help employees focus on well-being and guide them on how to best use the resources you offer. 

With those ideals in mind, here are best practices for promoting, maintaining and enhancing 22 areas of well-being for your employees.

Physical Well-Being

The most obvious of the well-beings, physical is about taking care of our bodies. Some of that is eating well, staying active, getting the right amount of sleep and going for regular check-ups.

To help employees with physical well-being:

• Create on-site opportunities to move. Invest in an on-site fitness center. It’s one way to encourage employees to return to the office while improving their health. It gives employees a chance to work out before or after work or during lunch — or whenever they can fit it into their workday. They also get opportunities to connect with others they might not work with regularly. (And if your employees are remote, offer gym memberships.)
• Walking meetings. According to the Mayo Clinic, sitting for long periods — as many office workers do — is associated with health concerns, including obesity and high blood pressure. To counter that, encourage walking meetings. For remote employees, you can even host virtual walking meetings over Slack or FaceTime.
• Fitness challenges. A just-for-fun fitness challenge can have the combined benefits of improving your team’s health and building camaraderie. One example is rewarding your employees for signing up with Charity Miles – the app that lets you turn a walk or jog into a fundraiser. Every step is a donation to a favorite charity.
• Ergonomic assessments. Poor ergonomic work practices can result in disorders like low back injuries and carpal tunnel syndrome. Providing ergonomic evaluations and online self-assessment tools can help prevent them. Look into resources and equipment, such as standing desks and ergonomic keyboards, to help keep employees safe and productive at work.
• Health screening events. Host regular health screening activities to boost well-being. Offer employees the opportunity to get screened for cholesterol, blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease. You might even offer the chance to meet with a nurse practitioner who can provide referrals or advice on follow-up care.

Mental Well-Being

Mental well-being is about how people think, feel and handle the world around them — demands from work, life and their environment.

To help employees with mental well-being:

• Normalize mental well-being in the workplace by starting conversations about it. When leaders talk about their stress and/or struggles — and how they work to deal with those — employees will more likely join in the conversation and seek help if they need it.
• Market your mental well-being tools and resources consistently throughout the year, not just during open enrollment. For instance, send an email weekly with a tip on managing stress and include links to resources such as virtual yoga and tele-therapy options.
• Help employees help each other. This goes back to normalizing and talking about mental well-being in the workplace. When employees feel comfortable talking about what’s going on, they’re more likely to help each other recognize when someone is overwhelmed and needs help. Caveat: Nearly half of employees who talked about mental health at work had a negative experience doing it, a Harvard Business School study found. So you might want to get a qualified doctor or facilitator to guide these conversations.
• Repeat. Repetition helps to encourage mental health. Promote days, weeks and months devoted to mental well-being. And then create a plan to continue to champion well-being throughout the year with a weekly campaign that includes reminders on how employees can take care of themselves and where they can tap resources for more help.

Emotional Well-Being 

Emotional well-being involves understanding and managing emotions, being in touch with feelings and expressing them in healthy ways.

To help employees with emotional well-being:

• Lean toward autonomy. Employees feel more in control of their lives beyond work when they have more control over their time, work and expectations.
• Get managers involved. Ask managers to make well-being a part of their regular check-ins with direct reports. Recognize that some employees might not be comfortable discussing it. So it’s important for managers to have resources handy to give employees. It might be a cheatsheet of the resources that are available through your benefits or names of experts who are available for support.
• Support overall well-being. Where possible, provide resources for employees to better manage their well-being in and out of the office to reduce stress. “By offering solutions that could help reduce obstacles to sustained wellness — say a personal assistant membership or caregiving support — employees will have an easier time focusing on their professional goals,” says Sean Paterson, Head of Commercial at Yohana.

Social Well-Being 

Social well-being is about the relationships and connections people have and their roles in overall well-being.

To help employees with social well-being:

• Crank up some fun. Employees are lonely, according to research from Gallup and the already-mentioned Harvard researchers. Why? They don’t interact as much as they did before the pandemic, regardless of whether they work on-site or remotely. You can’t force them to engage professionally and personally — after all, some people are content with less interaction — but you can give them opportunities to engage. Start a “fun committee” for more events. Pump more resources into your Employee Resource Groups to revive them. Survey employees more often to find out how they want to increase interaction and engagement.
• Encourage micro-breaks throughout the day. When possible, let employees take these brief breaks at the same time to increase interaction. “Setting up 25-minute and 50-minute meetings instead of 30-minute and hour-long meetings allows for micro-breaks throughout the day to get up from your workstation, which helps to refuel and refocus while also setting boundaries for a healthier culture,” says Greg Hill, Chief People Officer at Exos.
• Provide tailored employee resources. Help employees establish connections and psychological safety through workplace traditions and shared interests. “Amidst the RTO revolution, arm your employees with proper well-being practices, inclusion training, and opportunities for connectivity in order to enhance your overall workplace culture,” says Hill.
• Spend some days in the office to reconnect with others. Ask employees to go into the office a few times a week, as their schedule allows, to help them reconnect and create new ideas with others.

Financial Well-Being 

Financial well-being is about feeling secure with finances, managing money wisely and planning for the future. When this well-being is out of whack, the others will suffer.

To help employees with financial well-being:

• Offer financial well-being programs and resources. The Claro Wellbeing report found employees are most likely to use: financial coaching (32%), wage advances (30%), a financial support helpline (27%), financial education and reading materials (25%), and group sessions (25%).
• Have ‘money talks’ to keep the conversation going. Conduct a focus group of employees across different levels and departments to get qualitative financial wellness ideas on the impact of economic conditions and feedback on employee benefits. 
• Hold one-on-ones. Either by following a survey or by providing employees with the opportunity to volunteer for these discussions, HR leaders can connect with employees across all levels to conduct more intimate one-on-one conversations about the current state of their financial well-being and how your company can better support them. 
• Customize employee benefits. Diversify the type of employee benefits offered, specifically for different employee groups – such as parents/caregivers, newly graduated or near retirement – that need additional support beyond basic insurance benefits and PTO. This helps them put resources where they need it most.
• Develop a year-round financial wellness calendar. Incorporate financial education and benefits communication started now into ongoing employee engagement efforts throughout the year.
• Leverage HR technology for accessibility. Ensure financial wellness resources – such as budgeting tools, financial coaching, and educational materials – are mobile-friendly and available on demand.

You can find more well-being ideas in our story: 20 wellness program ideas for your workplace.