Many companies these days understand the importance of retaining brilliant young talent as well as the cost associated with high turnover rates. Over the past decade, it has become increasingly common to invest in corporate perks such as ping pong tables and bean-bag chairs, napping pods and meditation rooms. While these office additions may help with employee burnout, there isn’t much evidence that they address the actual wants and needs of employees when it comes to their health and wellness in the workplace.
One Havard study that looked into the wellness programs of various large US companies and found that 80% of those programs lead to less-than-satisfactory results. Much of this had to do with the types of perks that were a part of the wellness programs, which were not actually addressing the issues that mattered most to the majority of employees.
Another study dove deeper into this idea of “perks” to discover which were the most important to employees and their productivity. This found that air quality, comfortable lighting, and great water quality were the 3 most important wellness perks from a survey of 1,600 workers. These three categories were more important than having healthy snacking options and even fitness centers on-site. This was due to their power to promote not only the employee’s physical wellness but also their emotional and environmental wellness.
Water quality as an essential perk stood out to us here at Bevi because we’ve seen first-hand how increasing hydration in the workplace has benefits in productivity and general employee satisfaction. Workers that are dehydrated are usually lower energy, more irritable, and less focused and alert during the day. A large part as to why this occurs is because the hydration options in most offices are limited, uninteresting, or unhealthy.
While plenty of office managers and business owners offer freshwater for their employees, coffee and sodas are also extremely popular. Those options are less healthy than water and definitely do not have the maximum hydrating power that H2O does. Coffee and soda are historically less boring than water and when they need a break from their busy day, sometimes employees want to sip on something a little bit more exciting than plain old water.
The lack of exciting options leads many team members to forget about hydrating all together, which brings on those other symptoms of dehydration discussed earlier. It is through solutions like Bevi, the smartest and most exciting watercooler around, that office managers can boost the “water quality perk” in the office and also increase retention and performance. Employees hydrate more times throughout the day when using Bevi because they can completely customize their beverage to their liking, adding carbonation and flavors, as well as adjusting the temperature of the water. The flavoring has little or no calories and is created using natural ingredients that are gluten-free and kosher. That means that with Bevi, there are options for everyone in the office from the soda-loving accountant to the seltzer-obsessed communications manager.
Human Resources managers and Wellness Directors should look into how Bevi can be an addition to your company-wide wellness programs and initiatives. We now know that increasing the water quality and options at work can help dehydrated employees struggling to get through the long workday, and we think Bevi takes that to another level by bringing excitement back into staying hydrated. A less dehydrated workforce is a higher-performing and happier workforce and that is key to retaining top talent these days.
Jeff Gapinski
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