Why Businesses Should Encourage Employees To Take A Break From Alcohol

If you could find a way to increase concentration and productivity, decrease absenteeism, and help your employees live longer happier lives – wouldn’t you jump at the chance? Encouraging employees to change their relationship with alcohol is a great way to do just that.

It doesn’t have to be difficult either. There are pre-built programmes out there you can take advantage of. By encouraging this one behavioural shift you can find yourself with a stronger workforce and lower outgoing costs. 

Integrating alcohol-free challenges as part of an employee rewards scheme helps to further tie this into your company culture. Let’s take a look at the kind of benefits you can expect to see if you encourage a break from alcohol within your team.

What happens when you stop drinking?

• You sleep better – drinking can disrupt sleep patterns and leave you feeling fatigued the next day.
• Lower levels of stress – drinking affects the chemicals produced in our brains, leading to stress.
• Weight-loss – alcohol is very dense in calories with one pint of beer being similar to a doughnut.
• Improved focus and concentration – better sleep and improved overall health help concentration levels throughout the day.

How you can encourage your employees to take an alcohol free challenge

Most businesses understand how much alcohol can impact their employee's productivity and engagement. 17% of large businesses even feel that it is a major issue in their organisation. Despite this, we keep seeing companies flaunting “Free Beer Fridays” and beer taps in the office, which can only encourage employees to continue a negative cycle. 

If you want to take a different approach, and instead focus on improving the health and wellbeing of your employees, alongside benefiting the business as a whole through improved productivity; we have some tips for you. 

Employee rewards programmes

Programmes and schemes that offer employees rewards for completing certain tasks or displaying certain behaviours are growing in popularity. This kind of gamification in the workplace can boost employee engagement immensely and help to increase the retainment of your top employees. 

By using techniques like these, you can encourage your staff to take an Alcohol-Free Challenge for higher rewards. Any employee that remains alcohol-free for 28 days can earn an extra days holiday or a small cash bonus. You’ll find that the amount you spend on these rewards will be much lower than the cost of sick days and low productivity that alcohol can cause. 

Inter-office challenges

Take the employee engagement level up a notch and run an inter-office challenge to see who can avoid the booze for the longest length of time. Encourage as many staff members to participate as possible and have a great prize to offer the winner.

You could even run this as department vs. department with the winning team getting their hands on a special team-building trip. We all have a competitive streak, and this could be a great way for you to take advantage of that, while still benefiting your workforce.

Part of a wider health programme

Free gym memberships, fruit in the office, and yoga classes are benefits that you see from a lot of businesses today. Trying to attract a younger, healthier workforce, focusing in on wellbeing has become a top priority. 

This is really great to see as well. Gone are the days when employers rewarded unhealthy behaviour like overworking and coming into work sick. Now, the focus has shifted to maintaining the health of their employees and ensuring they are happy and engaged in their roles.

If you decide to introduce alcohol-free challenges into your workplace, including them as another part of a larger health programme is a great way to encourage participation. 

Where to start

Wanting to encourage this kind of challenge can seem daunting. There’s a lot of things to factor in and think about to get it right. 

Sign up to an organised challenge 

Taking part in these kind of challenges sounds simple, but without a great deal of support, they can become incredibly difficult. We all think that we would be able to stop drinking easily, but the reality can be very different. Giving your employees support is essential to seeing this kind of initiative succeed. 

This is why programmes dedicated to giving up alcohol, like One Year No Beer (OYNB) can be so effective. OYNB gives you access to dedicated support and a supportive community to help keep you on track. 

They use a holistic approach that doesn’t just focus on giving up alcohol. They also encourage their participants to focus on their overall health with their M.E.N.D. approach. Mind, Exercise, Nutrition, and Do. With this, participants will be able to see more benefits in a shorter time frame, helping them to keep on going. 

Set clear rules and rewards

Whether you use OYNB or not, you should be outlining the rules in as much detail as possible stops participants from second-guessing their decisions. 

This also goes for your rewards. You should make it crystal clear when and how employees can receive certain rewards. If you keep this too vague, then the incentive to keep going will be drastically lowered. The easiest way to do this is to mark milestones based on how long they’ve stayed alcohol-free. You can also introduce bonus rewards for creating a new mocktail, attending a yoga class, or signing somebody else up to the challenge. 

Cheers to less beers!

Encouraging your employees to take a break from alcohol can result in higher levels of productivity, employee engagement, and morale. You can save your business money and reduce absenteeism and turnover. Really, it’s a no-brainer. 

If you’re interested in finding out more about OYNB and the corporate packages, visit www.oneyearnobeer.com, or contact us at [email protected].

 

Take the Challenge!