5 Ways to Encourage Your Team to Be Healthier
September 12, 2025
Creating a healthier workplace isn't just a good perk, but a smart business strategy. When your team feels better physically and mentally, they're more engaged, productive, and resilient. Encouraging healthy habits doesn't have to involve massive overhauls or costly programs, but even the smallest of changes can have a big impact that is positive on your team.
Let's take a look at some effective ways to encourage your team to embrace healthier lifestyles so that you can reduce your employee absenteeism rates and look after your team in the best possible way.
Key Takeaways on Encouraging Team Health
- Promote Active Commuting: Encourage staff to walk, cycle, or jog to work by offering incentives like wellness points, raffles, or subsidised bike purchases. Providing secure cycle shelters can also make a big difference.
- Encourage Walking Meetings: Combat prolonged sitting by holding walking meetings, especially for smaller groups. This promotes movement, often sparks more creative ideas, and leads to relaxed discussions.
- Make Healthy Choices Easy: Stock your office with nutritious options like fresh fruit, nuts, filtered water, and herbal teas instead of sugary snacks. Making healthy food and drink readily available helps staff make better decisions.
- Prioritise Mental Wellness: Recognise that health includes mental wellbeing. Offer access to resources such as employee assistance programmes, counselling, or mindfulness apps. Foster a culture where discussing stress and taking breaks is accepted.
- Lead by Example: Managers and leaders should visibly adopt healthy habits themselves, whether it's active commuting, holding walking meetings, or choosing healthy lunch options. Their actions set a positive tone for the entire team.
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1. Promote Active Commuting
Making it easier for your employees to walk, bike or jog to work can do wonders for their health, and it doesn't have to cost you much as a business. You could offer incentives for active commuting, such as Wellness points, monthly raffles or subsidised bike purchase programs. Installing cycle shelters on site shows that your team is going to be more serious about supporting their own efforts and creates a practical solution to storing bikes safely. You may already have some of your team members who cycle to work, and if that's the case, now they have somewhere to park their bikes. It's a small investment, but it's one that supports long term habits.
2. Encourage Walking Meetings
Sitting around all day is one of the biggest health challenges in the modern workplace. You should try switching up your routine with walking meetings as not only do these encourage movement, but they often lead to more creative thinking and relaxed discussions. Walking meetings are ideal for those smaller groups or one-on-one check insurance. They don't require any equipment, just a bit of willingness to step away from the desk and they can be built into your regular schedule.
3. Make Healthy Choices, The Easy Ones
Your environment influences your habits more than they realise. If your office is stocked with sugary snacks, energy drinks and fast food options, that's what your team will default to, especially when under stress. Instead, provide healthy alternatives like fresh fruit, nuts, filtered water and herbal teas. If you have a cafeteria or a vending machine, work with suppliers to offer nutritious choices. Making health a convenient option removes friction and increases the chance your team will make better decisions.
4. Prioritize Your Mental Wellness
Health isn't just physical. Mental Wellness is critical for sustained productivity and a positive workplace culture. Offer access to mental health resources such as employee assistance programs, counseling sessions, or mindfulness apps. If you create a culture where taking breaks and talking about stress is accepted and encouraged, you'll be able to guide your employees in the right way. You should also consider having regular check insurance or short guided meditation breaks during the week.
Lead by example. Finally, leadership sets the tone. That means that you need to look at ensuring that the managers of your business are visibly engaging in healthy habits, whether that's biking to work, taking walking meetings, or making sure that they are buying from healthy lunch places.
FAQs for 5 Ways to Encourage Your Team to Be Healthier
Why is a healthier workplace important for businesses?
A healthier workplace leads to more engaged, productive, and resilient teams. When staff feel better physically and mentally, it can help reduce absenteeism and create a more positive work environment.
How can businesses encourage active commuting without major costs?
Businesses can offer simple incentives like wellness points, monthly raffles, or subsidised bike purchase schemes. Installing cycle shelters is a practical, long-term investment that supports staff who choose to cycle.
What are the benefits of holding walking meetings?
Walking meetings encourage physical movement, which is important when people sit for long periods. They can also foster more creative thinking and relaxed conversations, making them ideal for smaller groups or one-on-one discussions.
How can Storific help businesses support employee wellbeing?
While Storific focuses on business support, creating a healthy workplace culture, as discussed in this article, contributes to a stable and productive team, which is vital for any business, including those just starting out with Storific.
What role does leadership play in promoting team health?
Leadership is crucial because managers set the tone. When leaders visibly engage in healthy habits, such as active commuting or taking walking meetings, it encourages the rest of the team to adopt similar positive behaviours.
