6 Conscious Ways to Inspire Healthier and Happier Staff
With 2020 not exactly going to plan, it’s important to recognise that your colleagues or employees may be feeling some stress and anxiety due to the uncertainty this year has brought. With this in mind, we asked qualified yoga + meditation teacher and author, Rachel Grunwell, to give us some tips on how we can consciously help to inspire staff to feel happier and healthier.
1 . Hire someone to come into your office weekly (for 30 mins even!) to teach staff the “how to” around meditation to make it easy, relatable and do-able. Research shows regular meditation can rewire your brain. It boosts happiness, lowers stress and improves immune function. It can help employees feel more calm, grounded and heighten awareness and empathy. If meditation is an act of practice in the office weekly, it can underpin a wellness culture. In a world of Covid, this can even be a digital delivery into offices anywhere via technology like Zoom.
2. Commit a conscious act of kindness to a charity and get your staff on board to help. As a team you’ll do good for the charity – and feel good about this act of kindness too. Acts of altruism helps to elevate happiness. Sonja Lyubomirsky , a leading researcher and author of The How of Happiness, found that individuals told to do five acts of kindness over a day reported feeling much happier than control groups. That happiness they felt lasted for days – long after the exercise finished. Pro tip – choose a charity that you connect with and that way you will love doing this even more!
3. Inspire staff to do a 20-minute lunch-time walk or run for a mood-booster. Aerobic exercise is an effective way of lifting mild depression – as well as lifting you out of a bad mood! This gets staff out into the fresh air and sunshine and helps them to de-stress. Walking is even a strategy to calm anxiety. When staff return to the office after movement they will likely be more uplifted and feel in balance. Another spinoff is they may also be more productive. Pro tip: This stuff is best lead from above. If managers do it then staff will feel they can do it too.
4. Treat (or partly sponsor) high-performing staff by sending them to a retreat. The weekend-long Mindful Moments retreat at the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua is in Nov, 2020. During this blissful getaway, clients learn lots of science-backed de-stress and calm strategies. It’s also a weekend to feel pampered with a beauty treatment. Clients love relaxing on site too in the 28 pools on the lake-edge spa. The retreat’s wellness workshop, yoga and meditation sessions are a big hit with corporates. Find out more polynesianspa.co.nz/mindful-moments-retreat/
5. Approach a healthy NZ-made meals food provider and subsidise this for staff. It will support a healthier diet which can support staff to nourish themselves better, have more vitality and energy and feel better.
6. It’s a good time to think about staff Christmas prezzies. Instead of offering something that’s soul-less, give your staff some thoughtful options. Choose prezzies that inspire staff to uplift their health or happiness levels! For example, one option might be to let staff choose from 5 selected science-backed wellness book titles. Pro tip – you don’t have to be all wellness preachy about it. You can offer a wine option, a book option, and also a foodie option to cover some different options to appeal!
Connect with Rachel via inspiredhealth.co.nz
