New year, new wellness

Happy new year

Its officially a new year, and, for many, that only spells one thing: resolutions. Past research has shown that losing weight and getting healthy is the most common resolution undertaken by New Year revellers - even if they fail to keep up their resolution in the long run.

Now, suggests new research, if people really want to shape up, improve their diets and break some bad habits, they could do worse things than take inspiration from corporate wellness programs.

According to new reports for 2010, more and more companies are beginning to find space for on-site workouts or are encouraging employees who leave for lunch to pedal home instead of drive by instilling bike-sharing programs. All these fat-fighting schemes are designed to bolster healthy habits among co-workers: in short, helping employees to make notable and effective changes to their lifestyles – without necessarily putting them on a hard-to-adhere-to regimen.

And therein lies the rub. According to analysts, a slightly more "passive approach" to wellness - where education about healthier lifestyle habits is provided alongside opportunities to improve - is better than "incentivizing" healthy behaviour: such as retail giant's Whole Foods Market's so-called "calorie tax," which sees more cash being charged for the less healthy foods served-up in their cafeterias.

For HR managers, who often boast that their people are their best assets, workplace wellness has become the epicentre of corporate culture.

What's more, evidence has shown that such corporate wellness programs go a long way to reducing stress, absenteeism and turnover, as well as improving morale and reducing healthcare costs: subsequently such programs could well be a good start for those individuals looking to improve their health in 2010.

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