How do I keep my business healthy? Six tips for entrepreneurs for a healthy business
Lenneke Arts, MKB Servicedesk
Are your employees fit and energetic? As a business owner, you can encourage the health of your staff. This is how you build a healthy company.
1. Vital employees make a healthy company
Healthy employees are essential to a healthy business, that goes without saying. But did you know that preventing Sickness Absence can also save you a lot of money? After all, a sick employee can cost you as much as $250 to $400 per day. By focusing on prevention, you can shorten or even prevent Sickness Absence in some cases. Count your profits!
2. Physical or mental complaints
In a company with healthy employees, physical and physical complaints are less common. They tend to employ enthusiastic people with increased productivity. By physical complaints we mean not only flu and colds, but also for example: back pain, neck pain and stiff shoulders. If your employees have a physical occupation, for example in construction, there are also specific risks associated with that.
Therefore, also consider the mental health of your employees. How are they in their skin? Do they enjoy their work and are they good in the group? CBS research shows that employees with mental health problems stay home much longer than average. In fact, they stayed home sick for 59 working days, compared to 14 working days on average(source: CBS)
3. Identify problems in time
Sickness Absence is an indication that an employee is not doing well, but not everyone shows health problems in the same way. In fact, health goes beyond showing up for work every day. For example, some people don't want to show that they are actually suffering from something because they don't want to inconvenience you and their colleagues.
Claudia Kuijer, Director of Naviva Maternity Care, recognizes this: "Companies underestimate the feelings that can exist among staff. Take compulsory working from home, for example, which can have a considerable impact on your employees. Unfortunately, there is little talk about this. Before you know it, the focus in conversations is only on corona measures and the company. Conversations that do take place are mainly about the results or content of the work."
Show your employees that you care about their health. This is more than giving them individually an approving pat on the shoulder once under an accompanying muttered "good to have you back. As an entrepreneur, take some time to find out how someone is really doing.
4. Have a Risk Assessment performed regularly.
If you want to create a healthy company, it is therefore important to regularly carry out a risk inventory and evaluation (RI&E). This gives you a good insight into the risks within your company in the areas of safety, health and psychosocial workload. It is also important, for example, to include the risks associated with the coronavirus. Good to know: you are obliged to make such an inventory. The Inspectorate SZW can request it for inspection.
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, we mainly work at home, so your employees face different risks than in the office. This is why nowadays we also check whether the home workplace is in order and what the psychosocial workload of your employees is. Therefore, make sure that the RI&E is always revised when new work situations arise, as is now the case in corona time. You can perform an RI&E yourself, or hire a third party to do it for you.
Based on your RI&E, you can set up a good health management policy. With many entrepreneurs it disappears into the bottom drawer. A shame, you can benefit from it. In small companies, health management usually comes naturally. Larger companies (from about fifty employees) do well to set up a policy on health management.
5. Preventing health problems
In addition to focusing on the risks, it is even more important to focus on prevention and target your healthy population, for example through a vitality program. You can pay for this with the work expense scheme. If you keep your healthy people vital, you can possibly prevent Sickness Absence and thus ensure a healthy company.
Walking for a healthy business
Sufficient exercise is an important part of this. For example, you might decide to take the whole team for a walk. This is a good way to deal with stress and recharge for a while. A big advantage of hiking is that you don't have to buy special clothing or supplies for it.
Almost anyone can step out the door and go for a walk. According to career and walking coach Ingeborg Steinvoord, walking actually makes you more creative. It causes your brain to make new connections. So a good reason to do the next meeting while walking.
6. Preventive Medical Examination (PMO).
To keep an eye on the health of your employees, for example, you can offer a Preventive Medical Examination (PMO). This shows that you have their health in high regard. A disadvantage of this, according to Nijhoff, is that it is mostly healthy employees who participate in this type of examination. "They just want confirmation of what they already know: that they are healthy. The people who are not, often fear the results and therefore often do not participate in these non-mandatory examinations."
In general, the following also applies: make the topic of health at work fun. Especially for the employees who may be a little less involved. Challenge and involve them. Put health on the agenda of work meetings, for example. Good communication about the usefulness and necessity of these studies is very important.
