Wellness Coach: How Your Organization Can Help staff members to Be Active
• Make sure that your building’s stairways are clean, attractive and safe, and post signs encouraging employees to use the stairs.
• Design a wellness newsletter or intranet.
• Promote the Activity Tracker and promote employees to track their physical activity 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 activity opportunities at different times to accommodate night-, shift-, and part-time staff members.
• 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 activity available to employees with special needs. Adapt information and activities for any employee who are visually impaired or physically disabled as well as for people who speak English as a second language.
• Educate staff members about physical exercise using information from reputable sources such as the Alberta Centre for Active Living.
• Offer facilities that invite workplace physical exercise. Possibilities include bike racks, physical activity room, change rooms with lockers and showers, and safe and attractive grounds for walking.
• Have walking meetings.
• Promote workers to walk to co-workers’ offices rather than e-mailing or phoning.
• Set up a stretching room. This low-cost plan requires only a room, stretching mats, stability balls and medicine balls. Put up posters that show stretches and exercises.
• Offer incentives and 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 have the potential to learn how many steps they usually take and how much exercise they need to add to get basic health benefits.
• Set aside space for staff members 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.
• Develop a workplace wellness fair.
• Hire a certified fitness specialist to create and manage an worksite fitness facility.
• Supply staff members with active wear that shows off the company logo.
