Employees significantly influence the profitability of a practice, the patient experience and the office culture. By investing in the well-being of your employees, your team will see success, and your patients will be happy. One way my business partners and I have focused on employee morale is by implementing a wellness initiative in our practice. We wanted to create a fun way to connect with our team that focused on employee happiness rather than direct productivity, sales and financial gain.

Positively influencing the mental, emotional and physical health of our employees has created a wellness-focused office culture that has netted business success. We see this in the decrease by 8% to our company insurance cost and by 11% for our used paid time off.

Here’s how to implement one in your practice. (Editor’s note: Make sure employee programs are compliant with state and local regulations.)

IDENTIFY GOALS

The first step in creating a wellness initiative is to identify goals. For us, these were:

• improve employee attitudes,
• lower stress,
• increase productivity,
• decrease sick time, and
• decrease employee turnover.

At the end of the year, we run the numbers, such as amount of sick time used and company health insurance costs, and have employees give their personal feedback on how the wellness program impacted their mood, stress, happiness, physical health and productivity in the workplace. This feedback helps us adjust the wellness initiative to better serve our team in the future. (See web version of this article for a PDF download of an employee feedback survey.)

ESTABLISH WELLNESS PILLARS

The next step is to establish categories to focus on, which we call wellness pillars. For our practice, we created six: (1) physical, (2) emotional, (3) social, (4) financial, (5) nutritional and (6) intellectual. After a brainstorming session where we discussed what we wanted to achieve with our wellness initiative, we chose these six pillars because we wanted them to include employees of all ages, health goals and fitness levels. We believe that well-rounded employees are the happiest and most productive, so we wanted our wellness pillars to reflect a well-rounded approach rather than just a focus on physical health. These pillars serve as the foundation for all activities, events, guest speaker topics and more.

EXECUTE THE PROGRAM

After the pillars were created, we got creative! That is, we identified what we would offer our employees or how we would tackle each one of these pillars, with the goal in mind. We’ve done monthly challenges, bingo boards and stand-alone competitions focused on our six pillars. Examples include:

• Physical health-focused events. These have included step challenges, group hikes and workout classes. It’s easy to tailor activities to fit everyone’s fitness level. We had great feedback after bringing in a yoga instructor to give a private class.
• Emotionally focused-pillar activities. These have included stress management workshops and self-care tasks, such as journaling and meditation.
• Social pillar activities. These are focused on cultivating relationships outside the workplace. Pre-COVID-19, our offices had a monthly movie night. In the midst of COVID-19, we still find social time through virtual happy hours and game nights.
• Financial pillar events. These have encompassed creating household budgets and challenges focused on spending less by making small changes, such as making coffee at home rather than buying it at a coffee shop. This year, we plan on hosting virtual guest speakers to educate our staff on retirement options, stock market basics and strategies to achieve financial freedom.
• Nutrition activities. These have included sharing healthy recipes, providing healthy office snacks, challenges to drink more water and bringing in a dietician to discuss healthy eating habits.
• Intellectual pillar ideas. This year, they will include a book club and additional optometric education opportunities.

REAP THE BENEFITS

Implementing a workplace wellness initiative benefits the employee and the employer in attendance, work behavior and job performance. It is wise to invest in the well-being of employees to have sustainable business success. I have found that the return on investment, while often intangible, is worth the effort. OM

DR. QUINT is a co-owner of Smart Eye Care in Maine. She is passionate about entrepreneurship and optometric practice management. She was the 2019 Theia Young O.D. Award winner and consults for Allergan, Tarsus, Atlas Ocular and Alcon.