How to Create a Thriving and Healthy Workforce

Along with being Pride Month, June is also National Employee Wellness Month—a time to promote and celebrate workers in and out of the workplace.

Because adults spend a majority of their “active day” at work, it’s important for both employers and employees that the workplace prioritizes employees' health and well-being. Disability inclusion throughout this process is crucial. If employees can be their “whole selves” at work (including with their disability), they will be happier and more productive. 

Let’s look at some steps you can take to ensure the ultimate well-being of your employees in the workplace. 

Encourage Disclosure 

At Relay Resources, we believe that wellness in the workplace begins with a culture of psychological safety—where every employee feels valued, supported, and empowered to thrive.

The first step to becoming a disability-inclusive workplace is to make current employees feel safe disclosing disabilities. As mentioned in our How to Create a Disability Inclusive Workplace toolkit, you’re probably already working with or employing many people with disabilities; you just don’t know it yet because they haven’t disclosed them. Despite one in four Americans having a disability, only 4% self-identify by disclosing their disability to HR or a manager. Many employees might feel as if they will be unfairly discriminated against if they make this disclosure. 

So, what to do? Encourage disclosure campaigns! While individual and nonapparent disabilities can remain anonymous, the more that employees disclose disabilities, the more that others will be encouraged to do the same. 

At Relay, we intentionally design workspaces and programs that support the whole person: body, mind, and spirit—because when people feel safe and supported, they can do their best work. For more on this topic, check out our blog post “Creating Work Environments Where Employees Feel Safe Disclosing Nonapparent and Developmental Disabilities.”

Make Wellness Initiatives Inclusive

Often, personal health is seen as an individual pursuit or responsibility. But for people with disabilities, the path to personal health and wellness can also contain systemic barriers and ableism. For that reason, we also encourage mental, emotional, and even financial well-being as part of overall wellness. For instance, if your company incentivizes employees  for “walking,” make sure it also includes “rolling” or other activities that recognize people with physical disabilities. There is also a strong link between being outside and one’s healthy mental well-being, so consider a meeting outside or flexibility to stretch, work out, or get outside during lunch or other breaks. Just make sure everyone has accessibility to get outside and no one is excluded!

Practice In-Office Wellness

At Relay, our Employee Success Coaches provide one-on-one support to help employees navigate challenges, develop skills, and foster personal and professional growth, ensuring that wellness extends beyond physical health and includes emotional and psychological well-being. Here are some other tools we offer for employee wellness:

• Access to curated wellness tools and digital resources to help employees manage stress, build resilience, and promote overall well-being on their own terms
  
• Thoughtfully designed break spaces throughout the campus, giving employees a chance to decompress, recharge, and care for themselves during the workday
  
• Ergonomic accommodations for every employee, ensuring the workspace supports health, comfort, and productivity
  
  

Look Beyond Human Resources 

At Relay Resources, centering people with disabilities is not a slogan, it’s how we design our workforce. We are building an organizational future where inclusion, accessibility, and belonging are a lived experience for all.

Most organizations employ one human resources (HR) professional for every 100 employees. We take a different approach, investing in Employee Success Coaches, Workforce Trainers, and HR Business Partners to create a robust support system tailored to the needs of our workforce. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, our friends at Disclo offer software that makes hiring and disability inclusion for workplace accommodations easier. 

Here are a few other items to consider going above and beyond for your workforce:

• Have your employee insurance cover health-oriented apps like Calm, Headspace or ClassPass
• Provide access to accommodations to make workplaces ergonomic-friendly, ensuring the best work experience possible
• Start an employee assistance program or have employee success coaches. Employee assistance programs (EAPs) are third party vendors that provide a range of services to employees, from counseling to basic legal and financial planning services.
• Housing resources (see https://www.oroimpact.com/)
• Student loan reimbursement
• Supplemental insurance to pay for costs beyond primary health insurance like co-pay or deductibles

Relay Resources is actively building a future where ALL disabled people belong everywhere—in the workplace and beyond. Our initiatives, policies, and daily practices reflect this deep and ongoing commitment.

We encourage your workplace to try to implement some of the aforementioned steps to enhance employee wellness!