7 Unique New Years Resolutions for Your Company and Employees

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Setting new goals in January, or your company’s fiscal New Year is a standard practice. But what isn’t so standard is setting unique New Year’s resolutions for the workplace. Imagine how much more productive and engaging your organization and it’s employees will be if more intention attention is put here.

meditation as a unique new years resolutions

Unique New Year’s Resolutions to Consider

In general, here are seven unique New Year’s resolutions for your company and/or employees that can greatly impact the health wellness of your workplace and its people.

Limiting screen time
Morning rituals
Monthly team bonding activities
Meditation spaces
Walking meetings
Group book reading
Utilize new wellness benefits

So, let’s talk about the reasons why these all have huge positive impacts and are worth introducing, or taken to the next level, in your organization.

1. Limiting Screen Time

Yes, this may seem very difficult and quite daunting, especially for workspaces and jobs that require nothing but constant computer work. Cubicles, emails, spreadsheets, and even virtual meetings dominate the workplace more than ever before, especially with the recent world-wide pandemic that drastically change the landscape of our work environments.

However, what hasn’t changed is the worsening data that supports the phrase “sitting is the new smoking.” According to Just Stand, 3.2 million deaths are related to physical inactivity. So rather than the usual spin of encouraging people to get up and move, try a campaign or setting goals around limiting screen time. If people are working toward getting away from the computer, or putting down their phones, they’re more likely to get up and venture away from their screens. In effect, benefits you’ll see include:

Increased person to person communication, and therefore less miscommunications
Jump in productivity, people seeking to accomplish more in less time
Efficiency increase due to breaks in mental processing
Focus improvement for the same reason
Increasing physical activity and movement
Reduction in health issues due to lack of physical activity
Friendships and work relationships improve from more social interaction

limiting screen time as a new years resolution

In fact, you can even find ways in your company emails, team meetings, or wellness challenges to tie this into a variety of goals your people may be working on individually. If you don’t have a specific company wide campaign going on, encourage your leaders to support your people in this way on a personal level.

2. Morning Rituals: Our Favorite of all Unique New Year’s Resolutions

Instead of rolling out of bed and running right out the door to work, having a morning routine that supports an enjoyable and productive day can change someone’s entire experience, and for the people they come in contact with. Many clear benefits include:

healthier metabolism
increased mindfulness
lowered stress
greater efficiency
better focus and communication

All from intentional activities that your employees can craft themselves, encourage them to do a few things each morning that they enjoy. Ideas include exercise, sunrise yoga, meditation, journaling, spiritual practices, reading, etc.

Do what you can to support their morning rituals. Can you make the shifts start at an appropriate time while still not using up their entire morning? What local classes or resource can you help pay for or assist in finding with them? How can you add this into your company’s goals or support your employees in theirs?

3. Monthly Team Bonding Activities

There is a great advantage to creating healthy relationships amongst employees at work. We’ve all had experiences in customer service settings where the group of employees clearly get along well and have connected on a more personal level. Contrast this with employees that don’t get along, constantly bicker, or just don’t care about supporting each other.

We can’t force our employees to like each other, let alone create deeper friendships or connections with each other. But you can support an environment that gives them opportunities to at least get to know each other in a non-work related setting where certain stresses don’t exist.

getting employees together as a unique new years resolution

Set a goal to have monthly activities together as a department or employee team. Get ideas and feedback from your people on what they’d like to do, and how to even involve people’s families or other friends. Some ideas may include:

potlucks or summer BBQs
holiday dinners with family members
bowling or axe throwing on week nights
rent out a movie theatre for a private showing
bringing kids to the local swimming pool
comedy show or game nights

With all the stresses that can come in work settings, having times to look forward to, even with coworkers, can ease burdens and bring lighter energy in the workplace.

4. Meditation Spaces: Most Popular of Unique New Year’s Resolutions

It feels like lately there is as much evidence of the benefits of meditation now as there is the benefits of sleep. Furthermore, with mental health awareness and support for that on the rise, being able to provide a space for meditation at work is highly beneficial. According to Forbes, six proven benefits of meditation at work include:

reducing prejudice and increasing compassion
improvement in cognition and attention
counteracting burnout and stress
better collaboration amongst team members
increase in memory stability
greater ability to curb negative emotions

So, beyond just having a goal as an organization to support a space for meditation on employee, work it into your policies and standard practices. The last thing you want is for an employee to suffer more from mental struggles which can end up costing the company, when they can simply meditate at work.

Work together with your employees to create a space that is comfortable, quiet, and supportive for anyone coming to meditate during the work day. Build into the schedules or break times so they don’t feel rushed to return back to work.

5. Walking Meetings

Sitting is, in essence, the new smoking. Sedentary lifestyles have been proven to contribute to a vast number of lifestyle diseases such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. We touched on this in Limiting Screentime above. Now it’s time to take it up a notch and encourage your leaders to conduct walking meetings. If you have groups of less than ten people or so meeting together regularly, and if it’s just a discussion with no need to be in a specific location, get your people moving.

Walk around the block discussing the ideas on the docket. Follow a path through a local park when the weather is nice. Attempt to do all of the stairs in your building if it makes sense. Movement during meetings not only supports a healthier lifestyle, getting people’s blood moving and oxygen increasing brings clearer thinking and sharper attention spans as a whole. Thus your meetings can be more productive, invigorating, while creating a healthy culture.

6. Group Book Reading

This idea could go a couple of different ways. You could have teams or departments reading personal growth or skill development books together in order to support their jobs or interpersonal skills. Or you could encourage employees that want to have a book club together, let them meet on lunch breaks weekly or a few times a month to chat about whatever book they’re reading together.

Shockingly, about 50% of Americans haven’t read a new book within the last year. According to Psychology Today, adult who do read books on a regular basis develop stronger brains with less likelihood of developing neurological disorders, among other benefits.

So, even if no one is keen on reading a book together as a group, you could have a small library on your worksite where people can borrow and return books on a variety of topics, even popular novels or comics. Poll your employees for ideas and what they’d prefer.

7. Utilize New Wellness Benefits

If your organization already has a wellness program in place, or other health benefits being utilized, start the new year highlighting and focusing on new wellness benefits. If you’ve revamped your wellness program and have new items you’ve added, be sure your employees are aware and help support them in utilizing those benefits. Find out if your insurance company has new included benefits that come with your plans, educate your people on using them as well. Being able to maximize what is already being offered can only increased the wellness of your organization. But if they are not aware of what is available to them or how to use them, you’re paying for things that may end up bleeding you money in the long run.

Being able to maximize what is already being offered can only increased the wellness of your organization.

Have lunch and learns for free where everyone is encouraged to attend so you can go over the new and exciting benefits that they take part in. If they need to signup or register for certain things to get them going, do it right then and there in person to help them take the first step. Send out company emails or text messages each week highlighting what’s going on so they can be reminded how to participate. Do what you can to not restrict the timing of when people “join” so they don’t end up waiting for the next window and eventually just forget about it.

Next Steps on Supporting These Unique New Year’s Resolutions

In conclusion, just like helping your employees take greater initiative, you as an organization must do the same. We invite you to schedule a free demo with our WellSteps team and discover how you can better support or create a new successful wellness program this year. Contact us today and get your year started on the right foot.