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Helping Teams Create and Stick With Healthy Daily Routines

The key to healthy living is to create healthy habits, which are the collection of things we do, day in and day out, to ensure that we’re mentally sharp, physically activated, well-rested, motivated, and inspired to take on all of the necessary tasks that make up our often busy lives. 

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Help Employees Form Healthy New Habits, While Ditching Old Ones

Bad habits are usually easy to form: eating junk food, staying up too late at night, or giving in to stress are all habits that are quick to adopt, and very tough to drop. (Think of all those New Year’s resolutions that are gathering dust on your to-do-list.) Forming new habits that are good for us takes a bit more work.

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Bring Workplace Wellness Home

In her latest post, Grokker CEO Lorna Borenstein urged us to make it personal. As Lorna tells us, “By making employees and their families the focal point of your company, you create a community.”

Numerous studies have shown that social support plays a key role in both health and overall happiness. A January study found that people who feel socially connected to family or friends have lower health risks. Researchers found that socially-integrated teens were 48 percent less likely to be obese, and older adults who were socially integrated were 54 percent less likely to develop high blood pressure.

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5 Clever Ways to Beat Procrastination

Getting started is often the hardest part of any task that you are avoiding, especially when it comes to working out. Even if you are passionate about something it can be hard to set aside the time to accomplish that task. 

Whether there is a tight deadline at work or you just want to squeeze in a daily workout, procrastination can creep up and stop you from accomplishing what you set out to do. 

Who needs all that drama? Not YOU!

Here are five clever ways to combat procrastination and become a more productive you.

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#GrokkerAtWork - Win 1 Year of Grokker Premium!

At Grokker, we want to give everyone the tools necessary to lead a healthier and happier life. And we’ve found that your employers want that for you too! We’ve created Grokker for Enterprise, a comprehensive wellness program to make it easy for your employer to bring all the benefits of Grokker to their entire employee base.

If you and your colleagues would benefit from Grokker for Enterprise - now’s the time to raise your hand! Enter our #GrokkerAtWork contest and your company could win 50% off their Grokker for Enterprise plan.

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Employee Wellness Programs Need to Get Personal to Succeed

While 50 percent of companies with more than 50 employees have wellness programs, they are not achieving the desired employee health improvements, the New York Times, recently reported. Wellness programs can work, if properly conceived and implemented -- the problem is they rarely are.

Typically, workplace-wellness programs employ a “carrot-and-stick” approach where the employee is financially rewarded for participation through lower health-care premiums and penalized with higher premiums if they do not participate. 

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The Art of Setting Smart Goals

It’s hump day, you’re already feeling that midweek slump and you may have even succumbed to the allure of the sweets trolley that has been wheeled around your office (we can’t really blame you!). The temptation to give in and forget your fitness goals is everywhere and it can leave you feeling less than stellar. All of that being said, it’s important to remember that no one is perfect and that we should strive for marked progress rather than a perfect version of ourselves, as we all know, perfect simply doesn’t exist!

So, let’s forget those sugary indiscretions and get back on track using a process of goal setting, well known in business but lesser known in fitness, SMART goals. We’re going to help you finesse the ART of setting SMART goals to ensure that you’re armed with motivation and the feeling that anything is possible!

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3 Reasons Why Today's Leaders Need Mindfulness Meditation

Many people hear the term mindfulness meditation and instantly their eyes narrow with alarm or roll back into their heads. I think I can see the thought bubble over their head flashing “Yes, I know, I know…but I’m trying to build a career here! I don’t have the time!” Because in the busy life of today’s leader (or rising leader) there never seems to be enough time for anything, much less 15 minutes a day for mindfulness meditation. That’s a mistake.

If you do not practice mindfulness, you may be short shrifting your career because you are neglecting to develop critical skills you need to grow and thrive in your career — and in the rest of your life. Here are 3 reasons why cultivating mindfulness through meditation is necessary for your success.

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Are Workplace Wellness Programs Helping Employees & Employers?

There is a wellness revolution happening in corporate America. As the secret has gotten out that healthy employees are more productive and handle stress better, companies have been scrambling to put together wellness programs for their employees. It makes sense from a business perspective. Having healthy employees can increase profitability, sales, and morale. But are employee wellness programs actually improving the health of employees and companies?

We know that workplace wellness programs have endemically low participation rates (Grokker’s Deborah Holstein has some tips for solving that problem), but how are well attended wellness programs working out? Well, it depends.

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Is Competition Essential for Workplace Wellness?

Workplace wellness programs are an awesome way to improve employee health, happiness, and productivity. But these programs can only be effective if employees participate, and disappointing participation levels are endemic. So what can your company do to make sure that employees get all of the benefits of a workplace wellness program? The answer might lie in a little bit of competition. 

People are powerfully motivated by competition, rewards, and teamwork. Therefore, incorporating these elements into a wellness program is likely to improve health outcomes for employees and increase participation levels. So how exactly do you incorporate these elements? Why, using wellness challenges of course!

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Working From Home is Good for Business

Is working from home really working, or is it just an excuse for employees to goof off at home? After Marissa Mayer famously ended working from home at Yahoo, researchers at Stanford decided to answer that question. So what did their research reveal? Well, it turns out that working from home is good for business!

Instead of tuning into Netflix, workers who worked from home were 13% more productive and reported improved work satisfaction and sleep. The researchers hypothesized that the increase in productivity was caused by a range of factors, including less distractions and sick days. Most dramatically, employee turnover reduced 50% in the group that worked from home.

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Stress is the Number 1 Problem in Workplaces

It may not be news that employees see their own stress as a top issue. Now Towers Watson’s 2013/2014 Staying@Work Report confirms that 78% of employers also see it as their top too.

An employee’s stress level is a top concern of their employer because it costs American businesses ~ $300 billion/year in increased healthcare costs and lost productivity from absenteeism and low engagement.

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NEW GUIDE

Caring For Remote Employees

Many organizations continue to work in remote and hybrid models as the pandemic winds down, but many employees, when given the option to return to work, would actually prefer to continue working remotely. Our new guide, Taking Care of Remote Employees: The Key To Business Success Beyond the Pandemic, gives you actionable steps to ensure that your employees feel supported no matter where they are working. 

Download your guide