Luxe Beat Magazine JUNE 2015 | Page 103

Business Quality Business Keep Your Team Healthy By Tom Raffio D uring my more than thirty years in the business industry, I have learned, through experience and benchmarking best practice companies, what it takes to run not only a business, but a successful one. What follows is the third article in a series of twelve that will position any business for success. In my last column I discussed how to develop your employees’ skills. While you are developing your team’s professional skills, you need to help them remain mentally and physically strong, too. At Northeast Delta Dental we are fortunate to have won many awards for best practices for keeping employees happy, healthy, fit, and productive. In fact, just last year we received the When Work Works award from the Society for Human Resource Management and Families and Work Institute for our flexible workplace initiatives. A healthy team is a high-performing team. If your employees feel good about themselves and their work/ life balance, they will be more successful as they will not worry as much while at work. I cannot recommend instituting flexible work schedules and work-from-home opportunities enough; however, it may not work for certain employees. For example, most of our claims are now paperless but we do receive a few paper claims in the mail, thus, our mailroom staff does their job best at the office. If you have employees who focus heavily on writing such as annual reports, newsletters, etc., I have found that these employees often write better at home without the distractions of the office. Another way to help your employees balance their lives is to offer flexible work schedules, we allow employees to work a normal work-week in four days instead of five. This flexibility helps employees be successful at work and at home. Many employees have passions outside of work volunte W&