Manager & Supervisor Tools

Employee well-being (and your well-being) has many benefits including:

  • Greater productivity
  • Less injury
  • Less unscheduled time off (e.g. calling in sick)
  • Work life balance
  • Improved morale
  • Improved teamwork
  • Minimizes rising health care costs

How Can You Encourage Employees to Practice Wellness?

You can prompt employees to be healthier without crossing boundaries. Start understanding what constitutes healthful behaviors. This Healthy IU website has a plethora of evidence-based information.

Look for opportunities to practice self-care and encourage others to do so. For example, do you take and encourage work breaks? Does your staff feel comfortable going for a walk or stretching at break time? Keep in mind you don’t have to be a marathon runner. Caring for yourself and encouraging your employees to do the same speaks volumes.

Follow healthy meeting guidelines when having meetings with food or pitch-ins. You don’t need to eliminate the cookies altogether, but offering healthy options and appropriate portion sizes helps propel a culture of wellness. It is also greatly appreciated by employees with diabetes or those who are trying to lose weight.

Support your departmental Wellness Champion. Don’t have one? Contact Julie Anderson (jullande@iupui.edu) to get more information or help sign someone up.

Learn more about what University Human Resources (UHR) has to offer: Employee Assistance Program (EAP), work/life, wellness, nursing mothers rooms, and more.

Encourage employees to attend wellness programs and participate in challenges. UHR encourages departments to allow employees to participate in university wellness initiatives, unless job necessity prevents an employee’s participation. To this end, several options are available to employees and/or departments. These options include:

  • Permit employee to work a flexible work schedule
  • Allow the employee to make up missed time on an hour per hour (minute per minute) basis
  • Allow employee to attend wellness initiatives during their lunch or breaks
  • Allow employee to use accrued time off (e.g. vacation or compensatory time off)
  • Allow employee to take time off without pay or benefits (ABS)

Encourage employees to request flex time soon as possible. Healthy IU classes are published on the website at least one month prior to the start of class. Making the request early allows the supervisor and employee to discuss and arrange attendance considering the above options (e.g. flex schedule, make-up time, etc.).

It’s worth noting that for job-related training, staff employees are not required to use their time-off accruals. In addition, for many university-sponsored programs/events (e.g., flu shot), employees are generally not required to use their time-off accruals.

Although UHR’s Alternative Work Schedules policy is applicable only to non-union staff, its provisions represent the general approach and “philosophy” of UHR. This general approach is summarized in Section 1 of the policy, which states:

"Indiana University encourages operating units to accommodate the childcare, family care, and other personal needs of employees by establishing alternative work schedules to the extent possible and consistent with the requirements of the operating unit."

Other policies and resources of interest may include UHR’s Training and Education and Conflicts of Commitment.