Workplace Wellness – Page 2 – EPIQ Risk Management

Six Employee Wellness Program Ideas to Implement Today

April 4, 2023/in Health and Wellness, Workplace Wellness/by admin

There’s no better time to spring into health. And there’s no better way to encourage employees to do the same than launching new wellness programs.

Here are six employee wellness initiatives to implement today!

1. Provide healthy meals or snack options

As many spend the majority of their daily lives at their places of work, providing healthy meals or snacks gives employees easy access to nutritious foods and makes it easier for them to maintain a healthy diet. While this can be an expensive perk to offer, it may help employees to feel more energized, focused, productive, and happy. It can also encourage employees to be in the office and encourage more conversations in the common areas.

Some healthy food subscription options to look into: Hungry Root, SnackNation, Garten. Employers can also help manage costs by providing snacks on certain days of the month.

2. Encourage personal time off and self-care

To be productive, people not only need a healthy amount of rest and relaxation, but also the flexibility to rest and relax when they need to. While it may not be possible to accommodate all self-care needs during normal working hours, allowing employees to rest when they say they need to benefits your organization in the long run.

Employers encourage their employees to take care of themselves, even when it may not be ideal for the business’ immediate needs, show they genuinely care about the wellbeing of their employees. And employees who feel cared for are more committed to their companies and ultimately more productive. Making this a win-win.

3. Provide mental healthcare support and resources

Though mental health can be difficult to navigate, as not everyone is comfortable talking about it and some may be afraid that talking about mental health may lead to crossing professional boundaries, the truth is that mental health needs to be acknowledged, maintained, and treated for improvement to be made. Life can feel overwhelming at times and providing mental health support and resources for employees can help them navigate these struggles and enable them to show up to work as their best selves.

Studies show that the global economy loses an estimated one trillion dollars per year due to lost productivity as a result of neglecting mental health needs. Many mental health platforms and online services are available to help employers better support, and prioritize, their employees mental health. These include:

4. Offer reimbursements for health and wellness expenses

Reimbursements are one of the most popular health and wellness benefits employers tend to offer. Most commonly, companies will reimburse employees for gym memberships or fitness classes. However, as more health and wellness products and services become available, many companies are looking to expand their reimbursement offerings. Some of these include offering reimbursements for meal subscription plans, fitness equipment and app subscriptions such as Headspace and ClassPass.

5. Encourage team-bonding in and outside of the office

The more your team gets to know one another, not only do relationships among coworkers become stronger, but also communication enhances, brainstorming and idea-sharing happens more frequently, and daily workflow becomes more efficient.

To help build relationships in the workplace, consider implementing weekly team lunches. Most people don’t like to chat while working, so facilitating weekly team lunches gives employees the opportunity to engage in casual conversation and get to know each other better. To help encourage relationships outside of the office, consider implementing quarterly team outings and events. This can encourage employees to build stronger bonds and friendships over non-work related topics and conversation.

6. Offer Wellness Incentives

Research shows that one of the best and most effective ways to get people engaged and stay motivated to participate in your corporate wellness program is to offer incentives. Incentives can fall under a variety of categories:

Cost Incentives	Example: Cash rewards, gift cards, reimbursements
Low or No-Cost Incentives	Example: Paid time off, extended breaks
Progress-based Incentives	Best for increasing and maintaining participation. Employees can earn multiple incentives throughout the program. Increasing the size/value of the incentives as the program continues is an additional way to motivate your team to participate
Participation-based Incentives	This type of Incentive can be given to anyone who participates in the program. Because of its non-competitive nature, this type of incentive is best for increasing camaraderie and cohesiveness among employees
Performance-based Incentives	This type of incentive can be given as employees reach certain goals or milestones in your program. If you have a team of highly-competitive people, this type of incentive is an effective way to ensure high participation rates
Results-based Incentives	This type of incentive is typically given at the end of a program to employees who reach an overall goal

The most common type of incentive is monetary and often includes:

Cash rewards given directly to employees as bonuses.
Reimbursements for classes, memberships, subscriptions, equipment purchased by employees, etc.
Money deposited into an Health Spending Account (HSA) – which we’ll talk more about later in this article.

Other incentives may include:

Material gifts (i.e. apparel, appliances, tech, equipment, etc.)
Gift cards
Company events
Free meals/lunches
Free subscriptions or memberships
Paid Time Off (PTO)
Extended or additional breaks

Six Employee Wellness Challenge Ideas for Spring

March 1, 2023/in Health and Wellness, Workplace Wellness/by admin

Spring is a time of rebirth! Making it the optimal season for re-engaging employees in your workplace wellness programs. And what better way to do so than with some fun, new wellness challenges.

Here are six types of wellness challenge ideas to spark your creativity and help you refresh your programs and get your teams excited to live healthier in body and mind!

1. Hydration Challenges

From aiding with digestion and eliminating waste from the body, to helping our bodies function, contributing to weight loss, and making your skin glow, the benefits of drinking water are abundant! The daily recommendation is to drink eight ounces of water, eight times a day (or 64 ounces/day), though some believe a more recently recommended evaluation based on activity level, metabolism, climate, and weight. While is seems simple, and regular water consumption may be standard for some employees, drinking enough water could be challenging for those who drink soda and coffee all day.

Implementing a water challenge is a great way to promote proper hydration. Hydration challenges are easy to execute, simply invite your teams to replace one or more beverages (soda, juice, coffee, alcohol, etc.) with water for 30 days. You may also consider creating a seven-day water challenge where employees replace all other drinks with water or challenge for employees to set daily water consumption goals. Be sure to design a process for everyone to track and share their progress.

To help employees succeed, encourage them to set up reminders: They can set an alarm to fill up their water bottle, schedule text message reminders from their wellness program platform to take water breaks during the day, or even keep water bottles on their nightstand, desk at home, and in the kitchen.

2. Fitness Challenges

Fitness challenges are a great way to encourage physical fitness and create healthy habits! Your employees will likely be at varying levels of physical fitness, with some being in great shape and others struggling to stay active. Fitness challenges may be tailored to help all employees re-commit to their workouts, yoga practice, or whatever physical fitness activities appeal to them. To aid engagement, consider physical challenges that can be done at home, outside, or at the gym.

Encourage employees to set a weekly exercise goal for themselves, we recommend 140 minutes per week, which is roughly 20 minutes per day. This is an optimal starting point for all fitness levels and it can easily be adapted to just about any fitness level. Have employees track their workouts, time, and progress and base rewards on effort rather than results.

To promote engagement, use your wellness platform or internal communication to create a space for employees to share workout ideas, videos from some of their favorite online trainers, and even their own workout routines.

3. Feel Good Challenges

After several incredibly stressful, challenging years, most everyone can benefit from feel good challenges designed to promote mental health. And being outside in the fresh air and sunshine can help improve mood and create a renewed sense of optimism.

For a simple feel good challenge, have employees track their time spent outdoors with a goal of at least 10-15 minutes a day for a minimum of 10 days per month. Consider offering extra points for spending an hour or more outside during the weekends. Employees may track their time in your wellness platform or in a journal where they track their time spent outdoors and note how that time spent impacts their mood.

4. Relaxation Challenges

As a society of workaholics and worry-aholics, with our phones delivering a fresh dose of work (and existential) stress before bed, in the mornings, and even on weekends, relaxation time may be at an all time low. Fortunately, a couple of relaxation-themed wellness challenges can help employees take a deep breath and unclench.

Relaxation challenges may be implemented in several manners. Consider having employees pick from any number of things they consider to be relaxing and commit to logging 500 minutes (approx. 8 hours) of relaxation per month. Some ideas include:

Mindfulness meditation and yoga
Reading
Listening to music (even more relaxing if done in a comfortable chair with the eyes closed)
Listening to nature, whether it’s outside or a virtual soundscape like a Japanese garden
Taking a long bath or shower
Spending time on a favorite craft or relaxing hobby
Gardening

5. Socialization Challenges

Encourage them to be more social with socialization wellness challenges. Some ideas include game night challenges, where employees participate in scheduled game nights with family, friends, loved ones, or colleagues. Another idea for social wellness is scheduling lunches with a buddy, whether that’s one or more of their children, a spouse, a colleague, or a friend. Set a goal for a number of lunches, game nights, or other social functions and have employees track their engagements.

6. Financial Wellness Challenges

One of the most popular financial wellness challenges encourages employees to wait up to seven days before making online purchases. Online shopping has skyrocketed over the last year with consumers spending more of their shopping dollars on ecommerce sites than in stores, creating a quick pathway to overspending. You may also consider having employees work on creating a budget and setting spending levels for the month.

For questions about these challenge ideas, or for assistance with refreshing your workplace wellness program needs a refresh, please contact Epiq Risk Management.

Five Tips to Help You Keep Your Resolutions

January 2, 2023/in Workplace Wellness/by admin

The new year often brings new goals and aspirations to live a little healthier. And the New Year’s resolutions the grow from these ambitions not only serve as an excellent check-in for our health and wellness but also afford us the opportunity to create healthy, sustainable habits for our daily lives.

These five tips are designed to help you achieve your New Year’s resolutions and make the necessary lifestyle changes to lead a healthier life year-round.

Write, Plan, Track

When considering what you hope to accomplish in the coming year, take the time to write down your goals and create a realistic timeline for achieving them. Then, identify checkpoints that will allow you to track your progress over the course of the year.

Be Small, Specific, and Realistic

When writing down your resolutions, be as specific as possible. Doing so makes it easier to track and chart your progress. Also, create resolutions that are small and realistic as you’ll be more likely to achieve your goals. This will help you maintain momentum as you move on to bigger, more challenging goals.

Seek Support

Share your resolutions with supportive friends and family member and ask them to share theirs with you. Having a support system can help you, and them, stay on track and maintain your motivation when you begin experiencing the inevitable setbacks. If you and your loved ones are working towards the same goals, you can also work together and encourage each other on both good and tough days.

Give Yourself Time

Certain goals, especially those that require habit changes, can take time to accomplish. Give yourself the time, and grace, necessary to make sustainable life changes. Remember that you have the whole year to create new habits so you don’t get discouraged when you get off track. While small and realistic goals offer quicker gratification, larger goals and major lifestyle changes will take time. And that’s ok!

Give Yourself a Break

Creating change can be hard! And it takes 21 days for an activity to become a habit, and six months for it to be part of your daily routine. Slip ups and regressions are often inevitable. But if you keep trying and stick with your plan, you stand a good shot of achieving your resolutions and making sustainable lifestyle changes that will empower you to live healthier in 2023 and beyond!

Happy New Year!

Workplace Wellness as a Company-Wide New Year Resolution

January 2, 2023/in Employee Engagement, Workplace Wellness/by admin

A new year brings new health initiatives. As you start to think of your goals for yourself and your employees, pause and think about your workplace wellness offerings! Is employee health a priority for your company? Are there programs and resources in place that set employees up for wellness success?

Workplace wellness is directly correlated with employee engagement and performance. Higher performance is often related to higher employee engagement and higher employee engagement is linked to wellness. So creating a culture of health and wellness is extremely important! And physical, mental, and emotional wellness are equally important.

While there are a variety of initiatives and efforts that may be implemented to promote employee wellness, here are 15 of our favorite workplace wellness ideas for the new year!

1. Offer healthier options in your vending machines and cafeteria to help make healthy choices easier and more accessible.

2. Each month, host a lunch and learn where you invite a health professional to educate employees on different facets of health, like stress management, or nutrition.

3. Encourage employees to take breaks throughout the day so they can focus on themselves and de-stress. Walking, reading, stretching, mediating, or simply unplugging throughout the day can help your employees feel refreshed and more focused.

4. Breakfast is a crucial meal but is often missed as the morning rush takes over. Consider surprising employees with an occasional healthy, catered breakfast.

5. Encourage walking meetings.

6. Be mindful of your employees’ workloads by creating manageable deadlines and, when possible, adjusting timelines for those who may be experiencing burnout.

7. Host fitness challenges. Whether bi-monthly, quarterly, or annually, fitness challenges give your employees a chance to push themselves and work towards a shared goal.

8. Encourage employees to stay hydrated and drink water throughout the day by gifting them with company branded, reusable water bottles.

9. Maintain an attitude of gratitude by giving daily recognition and encouraging shout-outs at meetings.

10. Motivate employees by recognizing and celebrating them when they do a good job.

11. Create a team of volunteer employees to help work on corporate wellness initiatives and the creation of your wellness challenges.

12. Make employee health benefits easily accessible and offer opportunities for employees to ask questions and learn more about their insurance plans and workplace wellness offerings.

13. Promote a culture of support and encouragement getting in the habit of pointing out the good in your team members and encouraging them to do the same. If you see something good in someone, speak up and share it!

14. Provide a safe place for employees with an open-door policy. Whether this is a manager, HR team member, or on-site therapist, employees should be able to feel comfortable to come forward with issues.

15. Fill your space, corners, and desks with greenery to help lower employee’s blood pressure and clean the air!

New Year’s Resolutions for Your Workplace Wellness Program

January 2, 2023/in Workplace Wellness/by admin

Each new year provides the opportunity to reflect and learn from the past and look ahead to the future with a renewed sense of hope. This renewed sense of hope is often fueled by New Year’s resolutions designed to encourage us to grow, change, and reach for our potential.

New Year’s resolutions are not only for individuals though, they can also be designed for businesses! And what better time to assess your company’s wellness program and resolve to make sustainable changes that will increase engagement and help your employees improve both their physical and mental health.

Here are some wellness program resolution ideas designed to build on past successes and improve engagement and ROI in the coming year!
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Resolve to Celebrate Success

Before defining your resolutions for 2023, take a moment to reflect, evaluate, and celebrate the wellness program milestones you and your teams reached in 2022! The successes and lessons learned in the past year can not only provide valuable benchmarks for the coming year but also help you create a culture of health in the coming year and beyond. As you identify your successes, take a moment to celebrate them with your team and recognize your collective achievements and accomplishments, then use these to reaffirm your dedication to creating a healthier and more productive workforce.
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Resolve to Increase Senior Management Visibility

It comes as no surprise that success starts at the top and the most successful workplace wellness programs are found at companies where the CEO and C-Suite executives are engaged, vocal in championing the cause, willing to participate in challenges, and open to sharing their own personal success stories. To help drive senior management’s participation, create goals for your executive teams and include them when designing wellness challenges. Healthy, engaged employees are happy, productive employees and there’s no better place to start than the top of the company.
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Resolve to Make Healthy Choices Easy

The most common barriers to wellness program participation are lack of time, lack of interest, lack of awareness, lack of access, and privacy. Resolve to address these issues by making healthy choices the default option, so that time, interest, awareness, and other barriers are broken down. Implementing simple changes, such as serving healthier foods at meetings, in the cafeteria, and vending machines, can go a long way in creating a stronger culture of health. You may also consider creating policy changes, such as making certain areas “soda or candy free” and/or environmental changes, such as posting health and nutrition messages in places where employees will see them (elevators, restrooms, hallways, coffee stations) or installing bike racks, locker rooms, and showers. The easier you can make it for employees to make healthier choices, the more your teams will participate.
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Resolve to Get to Know Your Employees

When designing a successful workplace wellness strategy, it is imperative to know your employees. Whether creating a new wellness program or revising an existing one, make a resolution to get in touch with your employees’ health profile and interests and solicit feedback from your Wellness Champions and senior management. You may consider schedule small focus groups to obtain personal feedback, uncover barriers, and develop a program that is based on listening, learning, and understanding your employee population.

Resolve to Communicate and Refresh All Year Long

A new year provides an opportunity to leverage the momentum of employees’ personal New Year’s resolutions to remind them that the wellness program is available to support their goals. By starting the year with a campaign that highlights your wellness programs and communicates information that educates employees, provides updates, and recognizes past success, you can jumpstart your engagement. Then, as the year progresses, it is imperative to create a strategy that includes a year-round communications roadmap that reflects national health observances, local community health initiatives, and company-wide wellness objectives. Resolve to remember engagement is fluid and design campaigns that anticipate the lows, leverages the highs, and keeps you connected to your teams throughout the year.
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Resolve to Have More Fun

While most companies focus on the launch of a wellness program, and create a wonderful kick-off event that includes open communications and lots of enthusiasm, many wellness grow stale as the year progresses and engagement wanes. Resolve to refresh your program, add new components, and keep people excited to participate. Also remember that wellness shouldn’t be serious all the time; keep it fun, fresh, and exciting by sponsoring corporate, departmental, or team challenges, offering incentives and giveaways for meeting goals, holding walking meetings, and designing other fun initiatives that promote both physical and mental health. Incorporating fun and freshness into your wellness program is energizing and can provide incentives for employees who would normally shy away from participating.
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Resolve to Encourage Personal Goals It’s been proven that personalized goal setting increases the likelihood of success. So this year, resolve to encourage employees to set measurable, achievable goals so they can experience early success and maintain their momentum as they work towards making sustainable changes. By attaining early successes, your employees will build the competence and motivation to fuel them as they face challenges. To further support your teams and promote their individual success, consider providing tools, resources, and encouragement needed to create a culture of health. Health coaches, health and wellness portals, and wellness challenges are some examples of what may be included in your wellness plan offerings.

Ten of the Best Holiday Team Building Activities

November 1, 2022/in Workplace Wellness/by admin

The holidays are upon us and we want to share some of our favorite team building activities and holiday themed games, exercises, and challenges to do with your employees this holiday season!

1. Volunteer Your Time

Arguably one of the most meaningful, effective, rewarding teambuilding activities, volunteering during the holidays gives employees a shared mission and helps coworkers bond with each other. Whether for a few hours, half day, day, or month-long campaign, volunteering your time and giving back to the community is incredibly rewarding for all. While food pantries are always in need, and tend to be accommodating of larger groups, volunteering opportunities are plentiful. From fun runs and turkey trots, to canned food drives, to delivering meals to seniors, volunteering at homeless shelters, writing letters to soldiers, to volunteering at local animal shelters, there are countless ways to give back during the holidays (and beyond!). When coordinating, reach out and connect with local organizations to assess their needs and determine where your team(s) can make an impact in your surrounding community.

2. Donate to Charity

While of the one of the more low-key holiday team building ideas, coordinating a charitable donation is one of the easiest ways to give back to the community. This option is especially attractive to busy offices or companies that run several shifts, as employees can pitch in and participate without having to be together at the same time. Prior to selecting organizations to support, consider polling your employees to see where they would like to see their donations go. Encourage employees to contribute personally or engage in fundraising efforts and, if feasible, have the company match their donations. For maximum impact, select local organizations and then share updates about the good work they are doing throughout the year. This will help employees feel more connected to the charity and encourage future donations, should you wish to donate to them again next year.

3. Host a Holiday Scavenger Hunt

Split your employees into groups, or create department centric teams, and create a fun, concise, holiday themed scavenger hunt list. Give each team five to ten minutes to grab the items on the list. Here is a list of scavenger hunt apps and treasure hunt clues for game inspiration.

4. Host a Holiday Meal or Potluck

Holiday feasts and potlucks are one of the most obvious holiday team building events, especially as the holiday itself revolves around food. You can either make reservations at a restaurant, cater in, or coordinate a potluck. You may also consider booking a few food trucks, participating in tastings, going to a farm to table restaurant, or attending a cooking class that ends with a meal, to offer a more unique dining experience.

5. Plan a Special Appreciation Day

Though Employee Appreciation Day officially falls on the first Friday of March, the holiday season is the perfect time to celebrate your staff for their hard work and dedication. During the week leading up to the holidays, consider planning a staff appreciation day and plan special events for employees to enjoy. Some ideas include chair massages, complimentary meals and snacks, raffles and giveaways, and handwritten thank you notes.

6. “Gratitude Tag”

“Gratitude tag” is a game that revolves around giving thanks. To play, team members take turns thanking each other for kind deeds. Once an employee has been thanked, that teammate must find a new coworker to show gratitude. Participants can give thanks via email, verbally expressing their gratitude during a meeting, or by leaving each other notes. The game continues until every team member has been thanked at least once. To ensure that everyone receives a sincere word of gratitude, we recommend keeping track of mentions on an Excel spreadsheet.

7. Write Thank You Letters

One of the most meaningful holiday-themed team building activities is writing thank you letters. To do this exercise, simply set up a station with nice cards, pens, envelopes, and stickers or seals. Be sure to block off thirty minutes to an hour where teammates can sit down together and jot out notes to those who have made a difference in their lives this year. Examples might include bosses and mentors, family members, colleagues, vendors, clients, or staff at a nearby restaurant. Team members can then sign group cards and deliver them together.

8. Play a Game of “Guess the Gratitude”

“Guess the Gratitude” is one of the easiest games. It not only gives employees the opportunity to express their gratitude in a group setting but also helps employees get to know each other on a more personal level. To do this exercise, each employee writes down one thing they are thankful for; answers do not have to be office-related, and more personal answers can help team members get to know each other better. Then, the leader chooses responses at random to read out loud, and the rest of the group must guess which team member the answer belongs to. To help vary the responses and make the game more fun, ask employees to avoid more common answers such as family, shelter, freedom, having a job, etc. and encourage them to think more creatively about the things they are personally thankful for.

9. Participate in a Turkey Trot

Turkey Trots are one of the more popular holiday event ideas. These races started as ways to burn calories before consuming a large meal but have become a holiday team building favorite among employers and employees alike. Running a race together can inspire friendly rivalry and encourage exercise. Plus, teammates can cheer each other across the finish line. To increase engagement and encourage inclusivity, consider sponsoring several teams of walkers, joggers, and runners and encourage employees who are unable to participate in the race to come cheer their coworkers. You may also consider opening the event to employees and their families.

10. Play a Game of “Holiday This or That”

“This or That” is another fun, easy holiday team building game. To play, the leader reads out a series of prompts, and players must respond with their preference. If playing in person, then players can move to one side of the room or the other to broadcast their choice.

A few starter questions include:

White meat or dark meat?
Mains or sides?
Spend with friends or spend with family?
Mashed potatoes or sweet potatoes?
Sit down dinner or mingling dinner?
Football or parade?
Black Friday or Cyber Monday?
Dress up or wear sweats?

We wish you and your teams a happy holiday season!

Tips for Coping with Holiday Stress and Depression

November 1, 2022/in Health and Wellness, Workplace Wellness/by admin

We’ve all heard the term, “the holiday blues.” But what exactly does it mean and how can impact you? In short, “the holiday blues” encompasses feelings of depression and stress that the holidays often invoke. Not only can this stress and depression ruin your holidays but also negatively impact your overall health.

While enjoyable, it’s no wonder the holidays carry an added level of stress, which can lead to depression. Good and bad, the holiday season presents a dizzying array of demands, from cooking meals and baking, to cleaning and entertaining, to buying the perfect gifts, and outfits, for all the celebrations. Between the never-ending To Do lists in your personal life, on top of the year-end demands and deadlines associated with your job, the holiday season is often one of the busiest, most stressful times of the year. Luckily, with some practical tips, you can minimize the stress that accompanies the holidays. You may even end up enjoying the holidays more than you thought you would! All it takes is making a conscious effort to set realistic expectations, planning ahead, maintain your boundaries, and seeking support.

Here are some tips to prevent holiday stress and depression:

Acknowledge your feelings. If you find yourself feeling blue, understand you can’t force yourself to be happy just because it’s the holiday season. Acknowledge your feelings and give yourself grace as you navigate them.
Reach out. If you find yourself feeling lonely or isolated, seek out community, religious or other social events or communities. Many may have websites, online support groups, social media sites, or virtual events that offer support and/or companionship. You can also reach out to trusted family and friends or seek volunteer opportunities that allow you to connect with others on a more meaningful level.
Manage your expectations. The holidays don’t have to be perfect and traditions from previous years may no longer suit you. As families change and grow, traditions and rituals often change as well. Choose a few to hold onto and be open to creating new ones.
Set aside differences. Try to accept family members and friends as they are, even if they don’t live up to all of your expectations. If you have grievances with loved ones, try to set them aside until a more appropriate time for discussion. Also, try to be understanding of others who may be upset or distressed, they too may be feeling the effects of holiday stress and depression, too.
Establish your budget. Holiday expenses can add up quickly! So prior to shopping for food, clothing, and gifts, decide how much money you can afford to spend and track your spending so you can stay on budget.
Plan ahead. Scheduling time and/or days for shopping, baking, connecting with friends, and attending parties not only helps you maintain a schedule but also helps prevent holiday burnout. If you’re feeling overwhelmed by holiday crowds and to do lists, consider shopping online and scheduling pick-ups whenever possible. When possible, plan your holiday menus and make shopping lists for gifts and holiday needs as early as possible. Doing so helps prevent the stressful, last-minute scrambling to buy forgotten ingredients, grab another gift, or find an outfit for that upcoming holiday get together.
Learn to say no. The holidays are filled with celebrations, projects, and activities. Saying yes to everything can leave you feeling resentful and overwhelmed. Understand that it’s ok to say no when you’re feeling stressed or suggest alternate times to get together in the new year.
Maintain your healthy habits. During the holiday season, it’s easy to get off track you’re your diet and exercise routine. And once you’re off track, it’s easy to stay there. Maintaining your healthy habits can help you combat stress, guilt, and holiday weight gain as well as promote your mental health. Here are some suggestions to keep you stay healthy throughout the season:
- Don’t skip meals to save calories
- Enjoy a healthy snack before attending a party or enjoying a holiday meal
- Include fresh fruits and vegetables in your feasts
- Get plenty of sleep.
- Drink plenty of water
- Strive for 30 minutes of physical activity each day
- When feeling stressed or overwhelmed, try deep-breathing exercises, meditation, or yoga
- Avoid excessive tobacco, alcohol, and drug use.
Prioritize self-care. Taking some time for yourself can go a long way in helping you maintain your overall health. Spending just 15 minutes alone, without distractions, may refresh you enough to handle everything you need to do. Seeks activities that help you reduce stress, clear your mind, slow your breathing, and restore your inner calm. Whether reading, listening to music, taking a walk, enjoying a bath, spending time doing a hobby, taking a break for yourself, by yourself, can help you combat holiday stress.
Seek professional help when needed. Despite your best efforts, the holidays may leave you feeling persistently sad or anxious, plagued by physical complaints, unable to sleep, irritable and hopeless, and/or unable to face routine chores. If these feelings last, talk to your doctor or a mental health professional.

By taking steps to prevent the stress and depression that can descend during the holidays, and learning to recognize your holiday triggers, such as financial pressures or personal demands, you can combat stress before it overcomes you. With a little planning and some positive thinking, you can find peace and joy during the holidays!

Six Employee Wellness Program Ideas to Implement Today

Six Employee Wellness Challenge Ideas for Spring

Five Tips to Help You Keep Your Resolutions

Workplace Wellness as a Company-Wide New Year Resolution

New Year’s Resolutions for Your Workplace Wellness Program

Ten of the Best Holiday Team Building Activities

Tips for Coping with Holiday Stress and Depression

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