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How to design an effective employee wellness program

These cost-effective tips will help you build a holistic employee wellness program to be proud of.
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Published 22 Apr 2022
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Updated 5 Feb 2025
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10min read

Implementing measures that can have a real impact on wellbeing needn’t cost the earth. Like anything else, it just takes great design.

Let’s play a word association game. What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you read “workplace wellbeing”?

A free fruit bowl in the office kitchen? An employee bike rack or a discount gym membership? Whilst all of these things are positive, they might not be having the total wellbeing impact you’re after, and you could be missing out on the range of benefits of a highly effective workplace wellness program.

Holistic workplace wellness programs can see a huge return on investment, from a drop in absenteeism to an improvement in retention, greater rates of presenteeism (the lesser-known flipside to absenteeism, the measurement of productivity and engagement) and an increase in employee happiness. 

So what is a workplace wellness program and what goes into it? Read on to discover our top wellness program ideas.

How should we think about workplace wellbeing?

A key finding from our Wellness at Work Report was that no single element creates wellness. A better way to think about health is a balancing act of seven dimensions; physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, environmental, social and occupational. All of these elements need to be balanced for total wellbeing – and if one area is suffering, the others will still follow suit.

An expensive supplement may not be effective in improving your wellness if it’s your social wellness that’s really suffering. A workplace offering healthy breakfasts might be nice, but it’s not going to help employees feel better if it’s counteracted by a disregard for mental health.

By considering the seven dimensions of wellness, business owners design effective workplace wellness programs to maximise their care efforts and speak to the needs of a range of workers.

What is an employee wellness program?

An employee wellness program is a set of unique offerings customised to support the wellness of your employees. It refers to the different kinds of benefits you provide your employees as part of their contract.

A good corporate wellness program will have a holistic approach incorporating mental health, financial and physical health benefits.

Why are workplace wellness programs important?

If you care about the costs of turnover, having a productive team and building an innovative workplace culture – you should care about employee wellness. It’s one of the best tools that employers have when it comes to shaping employee experience.

Our recent Wellness at Work Report found that 65% of employees worldwide are struggling with burnout, it is proving hard to remain productive thanks to a sense of extreme fatigue.

State of workplace wellness - Employment Hero
The negative cycle of poor employee wellness

Great leaders know that healthy and happy employees create more effective teams that stick with your business. The data doesn’t lie, our report found that employees who rated their employer’s commitment to wellness positively were 48% more likely to say they were loyal.

Putting together an employee wellness program that considers your team’s unique set of needs sends a clear message; you care about your employees, and you’re willing to invest in them.

And if you don’t create an employee wellness program? Well, then you’re sending different kinds of messages; I don’t have time to consider your needs, your wellbeing is not my priority or – worst of all – I don’t care about your health.

What should be included in a workplace wellness program?

Here’s our comprehensive rundown of what to include:

Tools to prioritise mental health and prevent burnout

Employee mental health is a hot topic throughout our report. Specifically, burnout. Burnout is affecting well over half of employees, with 34% of our survey respondents expressing that they had taken leave due to burnout. 

It can cause absenteeism and a drop in motivation, as well as being the slippery slope to more mental health problems like depression and anxiety. Smart employers and leaders will know that burnout must be addressed here and now.

Mental health tools include: 

  • Open up the discussion around mental health in 1:1s, and train your managers on how to have these conversations
  • Get involved in events like World Mental Health Day, and use them as an opportunity to share resources about mental health
  • Encourage working from home or hybrid working
  • Organise team bonding events, be they virtual or in real life
  • Encourage mental health days, allowing your team to take sick days when they need mental or physical relief

Our report showed that workers with a poor sense of work/life balance were a staggering 174% more likely to experience low levels of productivity.  Ensuring work/life balance is one of the easiest and cheapest ways to improve your employees’ mental health.

Discourage working outside of hours

Most of your team want to thrive at work, and if working before or after hours is rewarded by management, your team will recognise this and follow suit. Make a note of clocking off on time each day, and try to avoid working on the weekends.

If you do notice that your team continues to complete tasks after the workday is over, talk to them about it. They may need help in prioritising or streamlining their workload.

Implement remote or hybrid working for your team

Allow your team to save time in the workday by skipping the commute and freeing them up to complete small errands close to home. Many companies realise that workers are not only fully capable of working from home, but that it doesn’t impact productivity levels.

Make sure your team takes leave

Most of us have known that one teammate who never seems to take annual leave, instead just allowing it to stack up and up. Show management support by leading by example. Show that senior leaders in the company are taking leave and having some meaningful time away from their computer.

If enough time passes without a team member taking leave, again, talk to them about it. Is there anything you can do to put them at ease?

Incorporate physical health

Physical health has traditionally been a primary focus for employee wellness programs.

When you provide nutritious food, promote ergonomic health, and offer fitness programs or opportunities for physical activity, you make it easier to encourage employees to feel better.

The impacts of a healthy lifestyle are well known; employees feel more energised and they may find it easier to focus amongst many other wellness benefits.

Having support for good physical health makes for a happier team that can work to their full potential.

Promote hydration at every opportunity

Feeling tired? Battling memory fog? Drinking water can help solve all these problems. Some studies suggest that the UK population are chronically dehydrated, consuming less than half the recommended amount. 

Humans need at least 8-10 glasses of water a day for optimal health, so make it super easy for your staff members to access water. The water cooler is a workplace classic, consider investing in several and keeping them close to team desks instead of just in the kitchen. 

Bonus points if you can provide a branded water bottle with a clear volume printed on it (750ml, 1L, 3 cups). This is also a great option to distribute to your remote workers.

Enjoy movement together as a team

Make movement about fun instead of obligation. A classic option is to put together a sports team and enter yourself into a local league. This can be a great source of pride to the whole company as well as supporting health.

For other team members, engaging in a virtual challenge can make them more excited about taking up running or walking. Check out My Virtual Challenge for a fun way to make everyone feel united in getting active.

Consider ergonomics

Do you have the budget to invest in some standing desks for your team? If so, it’s worth the investment. Long periods of sitting can lead to a decrease in muscular and heart health issues. If standing desks are a bit beyond the budget, encourage walking meetings.

Whether you’re working remotely or in the office space, use your (one on ones) 1:1s as an opportunity for a walk and talk – get the blood flowing and the ideas moving.

You might also consider setting a budget for an ergonomic home office set up for your employees. This budget can be limited to, for example, £250 per person, and you can choose to stipulate whether or not this will be topped up or is a one-off use.

Provide healthy foods, but don’t demonise unhealthy foods

Like making water readily available in the office, make healthy snacks easy to access. Have fresh fruit, nuts and seeds, unsweetened popcorn and brown rice crackers at the ready for a hungry team.

Don’t worry about the birthday cakes or the afternoon sweets appearing once in a while – treats are another fun part of socialising and office life.

Focus on financial support and guidance

Our report found that 63% of employees are experiencing financial stress, which is leading many to feel demotivated at work or seek alternative or additional employment.

Employers can, and should, help their teams fill financial literacy gaps especially when it comes to retirement and pensions, and savings.

How can your business support employee financial literacy?

  • Educate employees by offering free sessions with a qualified financial advisor to your team
  • Run training sessions with general information from a qualified financial advisor
  • Share official, ideally government, financial information and resources with your team
  • Provide discounts on everyday items and services through a benefits platform like Employment Hero
  • Set up groups to share savings tips and goals

Offer confidential sessions with a financial advisor or financial counsellor

Engage with a finance expert and have them visit your office or offer video consultations once a month. For a relatively low price, your staff can share any financial concerns with the advisor and receive tailored advice. Whether they’re having trouble meeting mortgage repayments, can’t get a handle on loan repayments or need help constructing a personal budget, having an expert to walk your staff through their worries can make all the difference.

If a monthly financial advisor is not an option, there are plenty of amazing resources to share with your team to help them build their financial literacy. 

Finally, provide benefits and discounts to your team members, available through HR platforms like ours. Employment Hero’s My Benefits can unlock a whole host of perks for your team, giving you the opportunity to offer something competitive against big company benefits packages.

With Employment Hero My Benefits, you’ll have access to:

  • Discounts – Employment Hero’s marketplace with discounts on thousands of everyday items from health insurance to gift cards, right through to tech and movie vouchers
  • Wellness – A content hub full of education, advice and tools to help employees improve their financial, physical and mental wellbeing
  • Savings – a personalised spending tracker that can help you create financial goals, save money and save on everyday items through Discounts
  • InstaPay Now– a tool in the Employment Hero app allowing employees to access a portion of their earned wages in real time before their official payday. This can help reduce the need to take out payday loans with astronomical interest rates.

Focus on spiritual fulfilment

Spiritual fulfilment does not have to be combined with, or related to any religious beliefs. We spend around a third of our lives at work, so finding meaning and fulfilment in our working lives can make a huge difference to our overall wellbeing.

Introduce meditation and mindfulness into the workplace

In our list exploring the top 5 company wellness programs, we explored LinkedIn’s approach to mindfulness. The company has allocated areas dedicated to activities like meditation, yoga or deep breathing to help employees step away from stress at their screens.

Whilst most workplaces can’t dedicate areas of office space to relaxation, encouraging employees to take mindful breaks or running live meditation sessions can create a work environment of calm.Dwight from The Office meditating in a field

Support a local organisation together as a team

Working as a team to give back can help employees feel connected to each other and improve employee morale. Allocate a work day to team volunteering or run an office fundraising event.

Champion belonging and kindness at your workplace

Belonging is also an essential part of feeling fulfilled at work. Creating an effective Diversity and Inclusion strategy can make sure that everyone feels like they belong in your team and can work to their full potential.

After years of employers viewing their workforce as mere statistics, employee wellness has finally earned a place on the stage in the world of work.

If there’s one thing we know to be true, it’s that a low sense of wellbeing is a killer of great work.

When we feel off – whether it’s mentally, physically or even financially – our ability to work is greatly reduced. Poor wellbeing is the enemy of productivity, creativity and fulfilment. It’s hard to be a great employee when you don’t feel your best.

Employers can, however, do plenty of things to boost their team’s health and happiness, so they are more likely to feel their best at work.

Incorporate career development

Employee development has not traditionally been a part of an employee wellness program, but it should be, especially when looking at the changing sentiments around careers.

One way to incorporate this into your employee wellness program is by constructing learning and development opportunities that truly invest in your team members.

How can your business support professional development?

  • Financially support your employees to complete training at external institutions and providers that will fill gaps in their knowledge
  • Match up senior and junior members of your team for mentorship
  • Use goal-setting frameworks like Objectives and Key Results (OKRs), so that your team know they are working towards a big picture and making an impact
  • Always consider internal talent for promotion when reviewing new roles

Integrate the workplace wellness plan into your workplace’s culture

When the time comes to launch your workplace wellness program, you need leadership and senior management to lead by example. You need to have it ingrained in your culture and have everyone live and breathe it.

The last thing you want is to offer a wellness program but then have the actions or expectations of your leadership team contradict it.

Prioritise employee wellbeing with Employment Hero

At Employment Hero, we know that when you invest in wellbeing, you not only foster a greater sense of health, peace and happiness in your employees – you see the return in absenteeism, retention and performance. With so many cost-effective ways to design a great wellbeing program, why not start making meaningful changes today? 

However, wellness programs are not a one size fits all approach and should be thoughtfully designed, considered and measured. You need to consider your employees needs and address areas of organisational concern before you start splashing the cash on wellness initiatives.

From financial wellbeing to physical and mental health and job satisfaction, visit our Resource Centre for everything you need to create a happy and healthy workplace, or check out our Wellness at work report to learn how to best support your team and improve employee wellness.

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