Why Tech Companies Need an Employee Wellness Program
Lacey 
What is a Wellness Program?
Wellness programs are aimed at maintaining and improving well-being through the use of proper dieting, exercise, stress management, and illness prevention. These are usually achieved by creating goals for employees, such as weight loss goals or exercise challenges. They can also be achieved by educating employees or providing them with physical therapy.
How do They Help Employees and Companies?
Generally the most prominent way a wellness program would help both employees and companies would be by reducing time employees are sick or need leave. Simply by making sure employees are healthy will ensure that the minimum amount of time and money will be spent with them on leave. It would also help reduce the costs of healthcare, since employees wouldn’t be getting sick.
They can also help to improve productivity, generally people with unhealthy lifestyles are more likely to be doing something called presenteeism. Presenteeism means that the worker is physically at work, but isn’t doing any work. By implementing a wellness program for these types of workers, they’ll start to be more active and productive.
How To Get Quality Employees
Having a good wellness program can also help to improve recruitment and retention of employees. Most tech companies already have some sort of wellness program implemented, but a really good program might tip the scales in your companies favor. Employees might compare wellness programs of differing companies and decide on that alone. Lets not forget wellness programs are different for remote workers so there should be a specific section for them as well. Find more on Remote Employee Wellness Program.
Wellness programs even help improve employee morale, as when they start to engage with the program they’ll start to communicate with other employees and form friendships or camaraderie. This will help employees to feel valued and appreciated which can help with their mental health.
What are Some Good Programs to Implement?
Overall diet and weight loss programs would be great to start getting employees healthier, but a smoking program might also be a good idea if there is a large number of smokers. Otherwise health and health risk assessments are a good way to screen employees for early signs of sickness or disease and teach them about those signs. Exercise programs and activities as well as nutrition education can also help with weight loss and get employees more productive in general. Finally vaccination clinics would be a great idea seeing as there is a pandemic happening and not everyone has gotten the vaccine yet.