Healthy Employees Are Happier Employees
Promoting a healthy and stress-free work environment can pay dividends for your company.

By Gianna Stringer

While you’re at work, do the phones ring constantly? Do people traipse in and out of your office? Do you have deadlines to meet and maybe even a conflict or two to settle? These are the issues that business owners and employees face every day that can increase stress buildup.

If this is going on in your work environment, it’s time to stop and look at the big picture. Making sure that employees are staying healthy at work will dramatically increase your productivity levels and morale, and will mean less time off work.

Healthy Work Environment
What can business owners do to help promote health to employees and themselves in the work environment?
1.    Health screenings—On-site health screenings are one way to detect early onset health problems, such as prostate cancer, strokes, high blood pressure and heart attacks. These health problems can cost a company thousands of dollars per employee due to short-term disability payout, health insurance premiums, and the cost to hire and train a new employee. The biggest cost to a business is lost time and productivity.
2.    Safety awareness and procedures—Prevention is the name of the game, but if an injury or accident does occur at the workplace, make sure the most effective medical care is available as soon as possible. This reduces the emotional stress that follows an accident.

Daily Health and Stress Reduction
There are a number of things that you can do (and encourage your employees to do) to be healthier and reduce stress in your life.
1.    Eat a healthy breakfast. A busy day at work requires energy.
2.    Drink adequate amounts of water throughout the day. Eight glasses of water per day is recommended, but sometimes on a busy schedule that’s not practical. To maintain good hydration for the day, keep bottled water handy at your desk or in the car while traveling.
3.    Resist the urge for caffeine. Caffeine has been shown to increase the levels of stress hormones, which could, in time, lead to health problems.
4.    Snack on healthy foods. Snacking on fruits, yogurt, granola, and so forth decreases the need for fast food binges.
5.    Take walks. Emphasize walking during your breaks and lunches. A simple 10- to 15-minute walk can help improve your mood and clear your head.
6.    Maintain good sleep patterns. Sleep is a valuable rejuvenation time; don’t skip it.
7.    Keep all medical appointments. Regular check ups are very important to maintaining good health.

Impact of Stress
High-pressure work environments increase the chances of a heart attack. Researchers monitored the number of first heart attacks in a study of 3,500 healthy men and women between the ages of 45-70, and surveyed specific life events within the past 12 months. The following responses were associated with the onset of first heart attacks:
•    Work stress was a strong risk factor for the onset of the heart attack.
•    Men were 80 percent more likely to have a heart attack after being involved in a conflict at work within the proceeding 12 months.
•    When given an increased amount of responsibility at work, women were three times more likely to have a heart attack, and men six times more likely.
•    8 percent of the study participants had experienced an event associated with work the day before their heart attack.

Intense job stresses can pose more risk of a heart attack or other related health problems than that of chronic stress from the home accumulated over a 12-month period. Ensuring high morale levels will decrease the amount of stress in the workplace and will deliver great attitudes throughout the workplace.

While maintaining these simple but helpful attributes, your business will succeed in a stress-free, healthy environment for your employees and you as a business owner. Remember, the biggest cost to an industry is lost time and lost productivity—that’s what kills a company.

Gianna Stringer is a sales executive for Mobile Physicians, a company that specializes in making house calls to businesses, homes, hotels or any location to provide 24-hour non-emergent medical care. Stringer can be reached at (816) 935-0342 or www.mobilephysicians.net.