In the construction industry, worker health should be a priority over everything else. All safety policies and work procedures should be done with worker’s health in mind. Not every construction company has a wellness program that helps look after worker health, but the good news is that some construction companies do.
For example, a construction company in Maine has a wellness program that rewards workers for staying fit and losing weight and enforces a maximum human lift capacity of 50 pounds per worker. This kind of consideration for worker health shows up on the bottom line and in many other ways.
Construction wellness programs are concerned with a worker’s overall health.
What Is A Wellness Program?
In the construction industry, a wellness program is designed to encourage workers to be mindful of job site accidents and live healthier lives off the job site as well. A worker who smokes and is overweight is a much higher risk for a heart attack than a healthy person. On the construction job site, that employee is also more likely to experience some sort of health episode due to overexertion than a healthy employee.
A wellness program encourages employees to give up smoking, give up drinking alcohol in excess, eat better, exercise each day, and be mindful of their general health. Successful programs offer financial incentives to get everyone involved, and those incentives pay for themselves in lower insurance premiums and fewer work days lost to health issues.
Making Wellness A Priority
Construction workers will usually follow company directives that look to have the support of the whole company, as opposed to ideas that are only partially implemented. If you want to make wellness a priority with your workers, then start with mandatory training every quarter about the benefits of wellness. Managers and executives should also be encouraged to discuss wellness openly with workers to show that the entire company is buying into the idea. Once workers feel that wellness truly is a company priority, it becomes easier to get them to think about their overall health.
Happier and healthier construction workers make a construction company’s bottom line healthier as well.
Changes The Company Can Make
There are more things the company can do to show workers that a company wellness program is a priority from executives on down. For example, the company can bring in food trucks with healthier foods to offer for lunches instead of the deep-fried options most trucks offer. The company can also offer access to free programs to quit smoking or do annual health screenings to let workers know what they need to do to become healthier. All of these programs offer workers more ways to get healthy and to enhance the notion that wellness is very important.
If you want more information on corporate wellness, then you can check out the growing library of construction information offered at PDH Contractors. You can also browse courses by state to find the licensing courses you need to renew your current licenses or expand your business by taking on new construction specialties within your state. With PDH Contractors, you can get your classroom time in for almost every type of construction license in the country and be prepared to take your next contractor licensing test.