High demands and expectations can make health take a backseat in the fast-paced business world. However, neglecting your wellness can have a detrimental effect on your emotional and physical health – and even your performance at work.
The need for better executive wellness has grown recently, and many businesses want to improve. This blog post will discuss the importance of executive wellness, how you can maintain it and the best promotional health strategies you can implement as a business executive.
The importance of executive wellness
Executive wellness encompasses your mental and physical health; prioritising it can benefit your wellbeing and daily life. The negative or positive impact can be felt throughout a business, influencing factors such as productivity, employee morale and company culture.
Leaders who actively work to prioritise executive wellness work alongside a more robust, healthier team, making navigating work-related challenges that much easier.
Although executive wellness is a crucial focus area within a business, you may face several challenges. Long hours, tight deadlines, high-stress environments and demanding roles can often lead to executives neglecting their health and becoming burnt out.
Stigma can also surround certain health conditions, especially ones connected to your mental health. However, addressing these challenges can enhance and support executive wellness in the long term.
Maintaining wellness as an executive
It can be challenging for executives to maintain wellness, especially when work or personal life becomes demanding or challenging. However, you can enhance and support your wellbeing with a multifaceted approach.
Recognising that your wellness is just as essential as your role within the business creates a mindset that lets you put your needs first. Wellness shouldn’t be a luxury for executives; supporting your health can positively affect your work and personal lives.
Knowing when to seek support or help plays a significant role in kick-starting your wellness journey. Maintaining it comes when you learn to nurture your health consistently through resources and different support avenues while juggling busy workloads and personal challenges.
Wellness strategies for business leaders
Once you recognise the need to prioritise executive wellness, you might wonder how you can enhance and support it. Balancing these different strategies is one of the most effective ways.
Self-care
Putting your needs first can feel like a challenge, but as an executive, learning to promote physical and emotional health through self-care is essential.
Self-care is relatively simple and involves things like:
- Getting enough sleep
- Taking regular breaks through your workday
- Practising hobbies outside work
- Taking the time to unwind and destress after work
- Staying hydrated throughout the day
Although these may seem easy to implement, they often lose priority when facing tight deadlines. Make healthy choices and incorporate them into your daily routine to support your overall wellbeing.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness techniques such as meditation and deep breathing exercises greatly reduce stress and improve focus. If you’re experiencing a challenging day at work, taking a few minutes to breathe and reset your mind can centre your attention and help manage stressful situations better.
A well-balanced diet
Your diet plays a notable role in your overall wellbeing, so if your diet’s poor, it’s unsurprising if you feel the same.
Eating a well-balanced diet rich in vitamins and minerals can enhance cognitive function and sustain your energy levels for longer, allowing executives to feel energised inside and outside work.
Regular exercise
Spending at your desk, only moving when you finish your work day, can be all too easy.
However, incorporating regular exercises into your routine is essential when actively working to enhance wellness. Walking during a lunch break or joining a yoga class after work can give your body and mind the exercise required to function at their best.
Managing a work-life balance
A healthy work-life balance might seem unachievable for some executives. Tight deadlines and demanding tasks can easily take longer than your allotted working hours. However, regularly working more than you should can lead to burnout, increased stress levels and difficulty relaxing outside work.
Strike a healthy balance by setting boundaries, managing time effectively, delegating tasks and asking for help. While it may mean some tasks take slightly longer than planned, you’ll support executive wellness long-term and reduce the risk of burnout.
Open communication
Cultivating an environment where open communication is acceptable provides executives with a workplace they can trust to support them. Fostering solid working relationships that encourage open dialogue means you can value and feel valued and ask for help when needed.
Integrating executive wellness into the workplace
Putting words into action is crucial to enhancing executive wellness and can take a multidisciplinary approach.
HR support
The HR department is at the heart of executive wellness. From offering support and resources to providing access to medical services, the role of HR within a business is pivotal in wellbeing. Whether a list of resources to support better health or bringing in new work perks such as private medical insurance, HR is a crucial part of executive wellness.
Resources
Providing and accessing different resources designed to help executives is vital. There are a number out there and are often free.
Here are some resources you can use:
- Corporate Wellness Magazine
- NHS England – Every mind matters
- Mind – Free resources to support executive mental health
- Mind – Mental health training
- Mind – Wellness action plans
- MHFA England – Free tools for workplace wellness
Perfecting a culture that promotes health
Creating an office and remote-working culture that promotes wellness can also support executive health. Encouraging flexible work arrangements and regular breaks allows executives to fit work around their lives, not vice versa.
This approach can reduce the risk of burnout and allow time for things like doctor’s appointments, which you might have pushed back previously.
Corporate health assessments
Implementing corporate health assessments enables executives to protect their health proactively.
A corporate health assessment encompasses many tests and scans, which can detect early signs of certain diseases and risk factors for specific conditions. Preventative health assessments in a corporate environment have many benefits and are a great way to set your business apart while supporting executive wellbeing.
Prioritise executive wellness today with Echelon Health
Enhancing executive wellness isn’t a one-time activity – it’s something all businesses should adopt for the long term and make a part of their daily running. As an executive, you can access many different wellbeing resources to prioritise your health.
If you want to improve executive wellness, contact Echelon Health to discuss our Corporate Health Assessments and discover just how easy it can be to safeguard health in the workplace.
Sources:
- https://www.corporatewellnessmagazine.com/category/busines-of-well-being
- https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/workplace-health-applying-all-our-health/workplace-health-applying-all-our-health
- https://www.cdc.gov/workplacehealthpromotion/model/index.html
- https://www.bristol.gov.uk/business/business-support-and-advice/guide-to-workplace-health-and-wellbeing-for-employers
