It’s the first full week back to work in 2013. I bet many of you have noticed a lot more healthy activity going on in the workplace. Holiday excess followed by new year’s resolutions can be a real boon for your employee wellness program, increasing interest and participation. But not for long. We are all [...]

I’ll lose 65 pounds and look great by summer! We’ll put a fitness centre near the lunchroom and all employees will be energetic and more productive by second quarter! Yes, it’s the new year and here we go again: setting ourselves up for failure. Resolutions like these fail for the same reasons employee wellness programs [...]

Did you know that 30% of people call into work while on vacation? Are you aware that 37% of managers expect employees to check in with work while they are on holiday? Are you one of these people, and wondering why I’m shocked? The straight answer is that vacation time—real vacation time—is critical to our [...]

Health and holidays just don’t seem to mix. We North Americans tend to celebrate the holiday season with food, drink, more food, and a lot of lying around relaxing. While we all deserve a break and the opportunity to enjoy food and beverages that we don’t make part of our daily diet, overindulging during the [...]

When it comes to meditation much of what we know centres on the results people experience. Those who meditate report feeling less anxious and more creative, and state that they have longer attention spans. But why? One study tells us that meditation may actually be changing the brain. Researchers took magnetic resonance images of the [...]

A survey has found that workplace depression among Canadians is growing. In a survey for the Great-West Life Centre for Mental Health in the Workplace, Ipsos-Reid found that more than one in five (22%) Canadian workers experience depression. Other studies have found similar results. According to this article by Andre Mayer for CBC News, issues [...]

Change is hard. As I wrote in The Healthy CEO, change can be frightening because there is no guarantee that the results will be worth the effort, or that you can even make the change happen in the first place. Building incentives into corporate wellness programs is one way to make the change process more [...]

Reading the most recent Buffett National Wellness Survey, I see that very few Canadian organizations have caught on to the ideas I’ve been writing about recently. For instance, only 26% of those who responded to the 2011 survey said their organizations took a strategic approach to their employee wellness programs. Statistics like this illustrate how [...]

Kudos to the Killicks, an Edmonton-area family of yogis. In spite of busy schedules, mom, dad, and their four kids have made yoga part of their daily lives. As an executive, you might think it’s impossible to carve out a few hours a week to get your employees to engage in an activity like yoga, [...]

Most companies need proof that corporate wellness programs are effective. They want to know that these programs do make an impact on employee health and are beneficial for the organization. Working Towards Wellness: Global Examples, a report put out by the World Economic Forum’s Working Towards Wellness project, in cooperation with NHS Institute for Innovation [...]