Employee Wellness From the Inside Out

Does your company have a comprehensive wellness program?  Does it inspire and encourage folks to choose less stress and better health?  Or does it simply reward them for hitting externally mandated health goals?  External incentives, like cash bonuses, work temporarily.  Internal changes sustain.  You can pay a person to lose weight, or you can INSPIRE them to choose wellbeing.

Mindfulness training and meditation instruction are gaining popularity in the workplace nationwide.  These practices serve as conduits to stress reduction and inner change.  They empower people to make more conscious choices.  Some of the pioneers in this movement are Google, General Mills, and Apple. 

Google has a seven-week mindfulness program called, Search Inside Yourself.  General Mills has a meditation room in every building on their campus, and Steve Jobs was such a believer in meditation, he allowed Apple employees to take 30 minutes each day to meditate at work. 

This type of paradigm shift is inevitable.  The status quo incentivized weight-loss and exercise programs are simply not working.  New, leading edge, innovative wellness programs must take their place.  I say, inspire and motivate people to want to change, and give them tools to change themselves!  Now that’s a wellness program!

If stress, high health care costs, and low employee engagement are problems for your company, consider meditation and mindfulness training as ways to encourage employees to go within and begin choosing less stress and better health.  Consider it employee wellness, from the inside out.