Understanding and implementing healthy office habits is more crucial than ever. When we think about leading a healthy life, the typical advice often revolves around hitting the gym, maintaining a balanced diet, and ensuring a good night’s sleep. While these are undoubtedly important, they only scratch the surface of what it means to live healthily.
Physical activity, nutrition, and sleep quality are indeed vital components of our overall well-being. However, it’s essential to recognize that a healthy lifestyle transcends these activities. It’s not just about what we do in the gym, during our grocery shopping, or while resting at night. True health is a holistic approach that permeates every aspect of our daily routine, including our work life, where healthy office habits play a pivotal role.
Consistency is key in fostering a healthy lifestyle. It’s about integrating healthy practices into all areas of our lives, including our work environment, to avoid the pitfall of maintaining unhealthy habits elsewhere. By adopting healthy office habits, we can enhance our well-being without overwhelming ourselves with drastic changes.
With a few simple and gradually implemented adjustments, our work habits can significantly contribute to our health. Embracing healthy office habits allows us to thrive both personally and professionally, ensuring a balanced and fulfilling life.
Why do we need to encourage healthy office habits?
There are three key reasons we should encourage healthy office habits:
1. We spend a significant part of our working day there. This means that taking care of our health when we are in the office is equivalent to taking good care of ourselves, in general.
2. If we feel good when we are at the office, it contributes to our well-being both before starting the day and after clocking out.
3. Leading healthy office habits contributes to increasing productivity. A healthy employee is an employee who is reasonably well both physically and psychologically, and someone who is well inside and out is always going to work better.
10 tips to help you gain healthy office habits
Keeping in mind the main reasons to lead a healthy life, also at work, requires some effort on our part, enhancing our well-being at work is not easy and is not always in our hands. However, here are ten suggestions that can be easily within your reach so you can lead a healthy life while working
1. Take care of your diet
It is as much about taking care of the specific foods we eat as it is about the way we eat. The rush, laziness and the “bad” influences with food can drag us systematically to a diet that does not benefit us. Enjoy life, sweeten it up and spice it up as much as you like, but don’t fall into a dynamic of neglect with food. Find a way to eat a healthy diet most days. Of course, eat slowly and calmly, leave stress out of mealtime.
2. Don’t stiffen up, exercise
Endless days in front of the computer can cause our back, legs, and body as a whole to lose the tone and agility they need. Make sure your posture is correct while working and get up from time to time. Walk, take a stroll whenever possible to make up for long periods of sitting down.
3. Watch out for time
Don’t get to the office in a rush or stay later than expected, unless it’s to resolve an issue that can’t wait. Make the most of the hours you have and distribute your tasks throughout the day as efficiently as possible.
4. Make the most of your breaks
One of the reasons to have healthy office habits is that without being well we cannot work well, and that depends to a large extent on our breaks. Have a good break time routine, take breaks in a way that is consistent with the level of fatigue you are accumulating and take that opportunity to move around, chat with colleagues, have a snack, and get away from the screen. Do not allow breaks and work to merge.
5. Have a social life
A large part of the emotional salary that is included in a particular job is the possibility of sharing space, projects, and time with other people as long as they are nice, we connect with them and the company culture contributes to team cohesion. You are not a production machine: if you feel like it and whenever appropriate, take the opportunity to interact and nurture relationships with your colleagues.
6. Keep your desk tidy
To work with certain efficiency, and of course, with a high level of concentration and peace, it is vital to have our workspace clean and tidy. Make sure there are no distractions or obstacles around your work environment and that your surroundings are uncluttered.
7. Don’t interrupt without a reason
Socializing and enjoying interactions with colleagues is great and positively influences our well-being. However, for all of you to work better, you must respect the work atmosphere and concentration, so when you have free time, you can enjoy it to have a chat and a laugh. To do so, try not to start small talk every now and then or make requests to your colleagues that can wait until later.
8. Watch your attitude at all times
From the moment you walk into the office until you say goodbye to your colleagues. Of course, we all get tired, angry, have bad days, and other issues which you already know. Try to have a friendly, positive, and polite attitude most of the time. It sounds silly, but having a grumpy person on the team can pollute the entire work environment.
9. Use what you need
Make a comfortable and responsible use of materials and spaces. To work well you must have the necessary tools and comfort. Make use of the office and the materials at hand, ask for what is important, and can improve the quality of your performance. In general, if you have a coat rack, don’t keep your coats in the way, if there is a closet, keep your junk there, if you need to write stuff down, get a notebook, and don’t collect pieces of paper. Sometimes it’s as simple as that.
10. Cultivate companionship
Help your colleagues with what they need whenever you can and don’t make them wait unnecessarily. One of the things that contribute most to our unease is poor coordination with colleagues, selfishness, poor performance, or bad character. Don’t be like that and you will make it easier for others not to be like that with you. Be friendly and reachable.
As you know, there are plenty of reasons to add healthy office habits to your life, even if we all find it hard to get into it. That’s okay. You can start by taking care of your psychological health with the help of experts in this area. In addition, if you are responsible for human capital management in your company and you need help to improve the quality of life of the people in your charge, we can also help you. How?
Mental well-being solutions for enterprises
In conclusion, corporate mental wellness programs are fundamental to creating a thriving and sustainable workplace. Employers must recognise that mental health is intrinsically linked to employee well-being and organisational success.
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We hope you found this post on 10 healthy office habits interesting. If you would like more information about ifeel’s employee well-being platform simply request it, and we will contact your team as soon as possible.
