Health Handouts : Corporate Health Promotion Programs: How Your Organization Can Help employees to Be Active

• Make sure that your building’s stairways are clean, attractive and safe, and post signs encouraging staff members to use the stairs.
• Design a wellness newsletter or intranet.
• Promote the Activity Tracker and bolster workers to track their physical activity every week.
• Be creative, and make the most of the workspace you have. For example, mark off a safe walking path inside or around the building. You might also set up a training circuit, highlighting features of the worksite such as stairs.
• Offer physical activity opportunities at different times to accommodate night-, shift-, and part-time workers.
• For employees in remote or satellite offices, offer equal access to key initiatives via the intranet. Adapt challenges to suit their environment and take advantage of local facilities and resources.
• Make physical exercise available to workers with special needs. Adapt information and activities for any employee who are visually impaired or physically disabled as well as for people who speak English as a second language.
• Educate workers about physical exercise using information from reputable sources such as the Alberta Centre for Active Living.
• Provide facilities that invite onsite physical exercise. Possibilities include bike racks, exercise room, change rooms with lockers and showers, and safe and attractive grounds for walking.
• Hold walking gatherings.
• Promote staff members to walk to co-workers’ offices rather than e-mailing or phoning.
• Set up a stretching room. This low-cost initiative requires only a room, stretching mats, stability balls and medicine balls. Put up posters that show stretches and exercises.
• Give rewards and incentives such as shoe bags, ball caps, T-shirts or water bottles to reward employee participation.
• Hand out pedometers for three months, so that employees have the potential to learn how many steps they usually take and how much activity they need to add to get basic health benefits.
• Create space for employees to plant and maintain a flowerbed or garden at the workplace. Use any resulting produce for meetings and potluck lunches or donate it to charity.
• Establish a workplace health fair.
• Hire a qualified fitness specialist to design and manage an onsite fitness facility.
• Supply workers with active wear that shows off the organization logo.