Working from home has its advantages and disadvantages. Some notable advantages are the savings due to fewer expenses and being safe from the virus since they are safe at home. On the other hand, one prominent disadvantage is unhealthy habits they developed from staying at home the whole time.
Staying home makes people susceptible to binge eating their comfort food, especially if they feel stressed by the situation. Another bad habit is not being able to exercise. Due to this, their health will suffer.
Managers can promote wellness activities for their remote employees to allow them to become healthy and fit. These wellness activities allow the employees to improve their physical and mental health, which is important during the pandemic.
Here are some ways managers can encourage wellness activities for their remote employees.
Set-up a Wellness Hub
Managers can gather materials and set up a digital library of health-related content. Then, they can share with their employees through Google Drive or Slack. These materials can include exercise and nutrition videos, articles, and other content. They can also ask the employees to contribute links to their preferred resources so the manager can include them in their library. They can also organize the content by categories, such as websites, YouTube videos, and social media posts.
Subscribe to a Fitness Program
Aside from the library, the managers can also subscribe to an online fitness program that the employees can perform at home. These programs are ideal for remote employees since they can watch them any time they want.
The employees can perform their exercises in the backyard. And to give a proper ambiance, they should make sure the backyard looks great and have the trees in the backyard trimmed if necessary.
Provide Healthy Recipes
A list of healthy recipes is also useful for employees who may have no idea what they can cook for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Having a healthy diet allows people to strengthen their immune systems to help them fight diseases.
The wellness hub is a good place to start the journey to fitness and health for a company’s remote employees.
Start Fitness Challenges
With a fitness hub set-up, the managers can start fitness challenges for their remote employees. These fitness challenges should take into account the internet connection of the members of the team. The manager can also let the employees perform and record the challenge on their own similar to the online qualifiers of the CrossFit Games. They can also encourage the employees to share their results in the meetings and announce the challenge’s winners.
Host Yoga Classes
If the manager is a yoga enthusiast, hosting yoga sessions can also be a good idea to work on the employees’ stress due to the situation. If not, they can also hire a yoga instructor to lead the sessions virtually.
Have Fun Breaks
During lunch breaks, the managers can host a Zoom meeting where the employees can eat together virtually. They can talk about things outside of work. If it’s anyone’s birthday, the whole team’s birthday song can bring the team together. This is particularly true if the one celebrating the birthday lives alone. A good icebreaker for the lunch meetings is to let everyone know what they are having for lunch. Some employees can even share the recipes for their dishes.
The manager can also host lunch-and-learn sessions where one employee shares his or her hobbies. It can be an informal event where everyone relaxes and maybe learn something new. They may even find other people who share their hobbies.
Remind the Employees of the Fitness Program
When the employees are so busy at work, they forget about the fitness program that everyone can access. They can perform the exercises at their convenience. There may also be instances when some employees will exercise together.
The manager can also send a list of fitness benefits the employees are entitled to get. This will ensure that the employees know that they have these benefits. If they have any questions, the manager can encourage them to send him an email or send the email to the department that takes charge of these benefits.
Host Feel-Good Sessions
Hosting feel-good sessions is also good for the mental health of the employees. Taking care of the employees’ mental health during the pandemic is important since they may be struggling to cope with the situation.
Taking care of the employees’ physical and mental health is important to ensure they remain productive and efficient while working remotely.
