How to Encourage Your Team to Drink More Water at Work

Hydration plays an understated role in ensuring people are functioning well, and getting the most out of workers.

However, getting a team to take hydration seriously isn’t as simple as suggesting they ‘just drink more water’. These reminders may result in a temporary increase / quick sip of their bottle –  but it’s unlikely to help employees build long-lasting, self-monitoring hydration habits.

Therefore, if you want to get your team to take on more water during the day, you will need to ensure that you adopt a positively proactive, consistent, company-wide approach to worker hydration.

Water needs to be easy to access – the dispensers and coolers should be highly visible (out of sight, out of mind!), and good hydration habits should be part of the wellbeing priorities that form the way you do business.

In this post, we examine how you can do just that.

Ease of Access

We know that workers are more likely to stay hydrated if the water they need is easy to access on a work site.

That’s because hydration is mainly an opportunity-driven, not intention-driven, human behaviour.

As such, proper placement of water dispensers is vital. A compact, eye-level solution (like these Aquacool water dispensers) are ideal for keeping hydration points visible and accessible without taking up valuable floor space. High traffic areas such as the following locations tend to work well when it comes to water dispenser placement:

• Shared workspaces and open-plan offices
• Corridors and walkways 
• Meeting rooms
• Break or social/dining areas
• Entrances and exits

High Visibility

Even easy-to-access hydration stations can be ignored by workers if they tend to blend into the background or they just become ‘part of the furniture’.

That means that water dispensing units and coolers need to be not just easy to access but visible and prominent at the same time. (It’s no good hiding them behind a plant or screen – and if decor is a factor, rest assured there are more attractive designs available these days.)

Highly visible water stations act as a gentle nudge / reminder for employees to drink more water, especially when positioned in places they frequently walk past or sit next to – this helps to build healthier hydration habits as part of their normal daily routine.

To ensure your countertop station is most visible, it should be installed where workers:

• Walk past frequently
• Gather or pause
• Take breaks
• Enter shared spaces

Good Habits

Ease of access and visibility are just two of the pillars of a robust hydration policy.

Building a culture where water taking becomes a habit is also essential, as we know that good habits start with routine.

Human psychology has a role to play here – by employing behavioural prompts and subtle cues to employees, you can encourage them to cultivate good hydration habits.

The prompts you may want to try to get your team to adopt healthy hydration habits could sound something like:

• Don’t forget to refill your water bottles at the beginning of your shift
• Take on water before and/or after every team meeting
• Remember to take hydration breaks during long periods of work
• Always keep reusable bottles and drinking vessels nearby
• Take water on board during the consumption of tea or coffee

Conclusion

Building good hydration habits among your team can be a challenge, but it needn’t be an insurmountable one.

By making water easily accessible, water stations obvious and encouraging the cultivation of a water-taking routine, any workplace can get its team taking hydration seriously.

 

*This is a collaborative post.