Fall, like spring, marks an ideal season for taking up a new exercise program. It’s not too hot, not too cold, and autumn’s natural beauty adds a little extra incentive for moving it outside.

If your employees have been slacking off because of the heat (or for any other reason, for that matter), mark the kickoff of fall as the beginning of a new and improved exercise campaign.

Encourage them to get back into the swing of things with a walking program designed to get them back in shape and recommitted to fitness. Besides the physical benefits of a walking workout, they’ll get all the mind- and soul-soothing effects of nature at its most dazzling.

With a little luck and a lot of encouragement, by the time winter rolls around, exercise will have become an indispensable part of their daily routine. And they’re sure to be better off than they were before.

So start a walking group, or up the stakes with a little healthy competition. Pass out pedometers so staff members can track their steps, and offer a cash incentive to the winning walker.

The ease and familiarity of walking lends itself to beginners, but its appeal is universal. And so are the benefits.

Here are some of the main reasons to start walking, from MedicineNet.com:

Colds, flu, and seasonal allergies will probably start making the rounds at your office in the near future, if they haven’t already. For your employees, that means feeling physically ill and mentally drained; for you, it means taking up the slack for your workers’ missed workdays and a general decrease in productivity.

Too early to worry about the flu, you say? According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “the timing of flu is very unpredictable and can vary from season to season. Flu activity most commonly peaks in the U.S. in January or February. However, seasonal flu activity can begin as early as October and continue to occur as late as May.”

And it never hurts to be prepared. Go ahead and start promoting the flu vaccine. Last year nearly 131 million people got vaccinated, a record high in this country, according to the CDC, which recommends a vaccine for everyone over 6 months of age.

Fortunately for corporate wellness folks, the push for vaccination is resulting in easier and more convenient options that you can use in your no-excuses promotion efforts. These include nasal sprays, smaller needles, and more locations, such as many pharmacies, where flu shots can be administered.

Until they find a cure for the common cold, your best bet is prevention. Encourage your workers to employ a healthy dose of common sense to keep themselves well and to keep germs from spreading. This includes frequent hand-washing, covering coughs and sneezes, and sanitizing desktops and common areas. You may want to provide a stockpile of disinfecting wipes to make the latter more convenient.

As for allergies, advise your employees on ways to avoid their triggers, which may be anything from dust mites to mold spores to pollen. Have your office air ducts cleaned before the weather becomes cold enough to turn on the heat. Over-the-counter allergy medications can help alleviate your workers’ symptoms, and if they’re severe, point them in the direction of an allergy specialist.

Here’s to a happy, healthy fall.

But consider its implications. Without enough sleep, your employees face all kinds of problems at work and at home. They struggle to focus, their health may suffer, and they probably experience stress more acutely.

Moodiness and fatigue may make it hard for them to interact appropriately with coworkers and get their jobs done well. And sleep deprivation leaves them vulnerable to illness, accidents, and injuries.

All of these consequences affect your business, and the potential problems, from decreased quality of work to interpersonal conflict among employees, can do some serious damage to the healthy, well-balanced office atmosphere you’ve worked so hard to create.

Approaching sleep as an important aspect of corporate wellness and employee safety, it’s wise to offer tips on how to change one’s habits in order to improve sleep, not just to cite all the negatives associated with insufficient sleep.

Those who are having trouble in the bedroom (sleeping, of course) are well-versed in the effects of poor sleep. They are more concerned with how to fix the problem. And it is fixable, either by making a few routine adjustments or, in more severe cases, with the help of a doctor or sleep specialist.

Often the solution comes in the form of some simple tips, such as these from The Better Sleep Council:

In an online poll of 751 North American workers by Right Management, a third of them said they rarely or never take a lunch break and another third eat at their desks.

Says Michael Haid of Right Management, “Employees may feel they have to apologize for stepping out, but in the long run this kind of company culture does not help improve performance or engagement.”

Look around your office at noon on a given day and see how many of your employees are scarfing down a sandwich at their desks, phones cradled on their shoulder and fingers typing away.

And even the sandwich scarfers are better off than those who grab a bag of chips and a soda from the vending machine, or those who skip lunch altogether.

Today’s fast-paced office environment, overworked employees, and general sense of job insecurity compounds the problem of midday meal missteps.

The idea that multitasking is the only way to get it all done actually does more harm than good. By trying to do everything at the same time, they’re setting themselves up to do it all halfway. They’re also missing out on the opportunity to replenish their energy, refocus their attention, and give their brains a rest so they can ramp up their productivity for the remainder of the day.

And if you can’t pry them away from their desks long enough to refuel with a nutritious lunch, forget about that 10-minute walk around the building that you’ve been clamoring for.

Encourage your employees to get away for a real lunch break every day. You can’t force them to eat a well-balanced lunch or keep them from wolfing down a fast-food burger between meetings. But even if they take a break to get a breath of fresh air, the simple act of getting away from their desks has big benefits.

Productivity and performance will show you how big.

That’s advice any corporate wellness advisor can get behind. After all, heart health is a key factor in overall health, and a strongly pumping heart keeps your employees in prime physical and mental condition.

With heart disease ranked as the number one killer of men and women in America, promoting heart health should be at the top of your priority list when it comes to educating your staff on how to preserve good health or improve bad health.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “About every 25 seconds, an American will have a coronary event, and about one every minute will die from one.”

Heart health factors in everything from reducing stroke and heart attack risk to lowering blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Conveniently, the best defense against heart problems is something that also tackles obesity, type 2 diabetes, and other health issues that negatively impact your workers: diet and exercise.

The tools of the corporate wellness trade, healthy diet and daily exercise are your best go-to pieces of advice when raising awareness about heart health.

Keeping this vital muscle in tip-top shape may be easier than you think, too: A study published recently in Circulation: Heart Failure cites four simple steps to a healthy heart.

And we do mean simple: Don’t smoke, lose weight, exercise regularly, and eat vegetables.

In the study, people who adopted these lifestyle habits reduced their risk of heart failure by 81% in women in 69% in men, according to WebMD.

More specifically, the CDC recommends the following:

The much-lauded work-life balance that is so vital to employees’ well-roundedness is often focused on dividing time between job responsibilities and those outside the walls of the office: family, social, and civic obligations.

Apportioning one’s time this way doesn’t leave much for equally important aspects like daily exercise. Take this into account in your attempts to promote a healthy work-life balance.

People want to hear, for example, how they can fit it all in without feeling that they’re shortchanging anyone or anything. And that’s not as difficult as it sounds, when you consider how certain tasks and pastimes can be combined.

Take walking, for example. A brisk after-dinner walk or before-work trek can become more than just exercise with the addition of a few choice walking partners.

Walking with family or friends allows some quality time together while getting in a good dose of physical activity. It’s also a great way to burn off the stress of the day or energize for the day ahead, depending on what time you choose to hit the sidewalk.

Walking the dog benefits both two-legged and four-legged participants and boosts motivation (your furry friend is counting on you, after all).

Family recreation that involves physical activity (a trip to the park or a bike ride in lieu of family movie night, for example) is a fun and positive experience for everyone, teaching kids by example the rewards of making simple choices like playing outside instead of playing video games.

There are countless ways to enjoy fitness with the important people in your life, to facilitate a healthy work-life balance and to fulfill the need for enjoyment with friends and family while doing something positive for your health and theirs.

At your next staff wellness meeting, brainstorm ideas for fun, family-friendly fitness such as:

Odds are, that’s because their perspective of “eating light” is skewed. They imagine bland rice cakes, undressed salads, incessant hunger pangs … in a word, deprivation.

It doesn’t have to be that way, and the odds of successfully adopting and maintaining a balanced and nutritious diet of lighter fare are much better if the feeling of deprivation can be avoided altogether.

Food should be enjoyed, not just used as fuel for the body, and enjoyable doesn’t necessarily mean calorie-laden.

Enter diet tricks that can make you forget you’re dieting.

We’ve all heard advice about snacking on fresh fruit when you get a hankering for something sweet, or munching raw veggies to get your crunch fix. And while those are both sound ideas, there are other ways to indulge those cravings without feeling slighted.

Sometimes it’s just about portion control. If only chocolate will do (and granted, there’s just not a suitable substitution for some things), satisfy the need on a small scale. Instead of a jumbo candy bar, try a square of high-quality chocolate … the dark kind, for an extra boost of antioxidant power.

Can’t pass up the mashed potatoes and gravy? Don’t … just eat a little, slowly, and refrain from going back for seconds.

And lightening up on portions isn’t the only way to cut calories without giving up the good stuff completely.

Tempt your employees with these samples from WebMD’s 100-calorie-snack roundup:

It seems this indispensable tool of modern society can do pretty much anything … including, research says, help people lose weight.

OK, so maybe it’s not plausible for your employees to simply point and click their way to weight loss. But online tools such as calorie counters and fitness trackers seem to be effective in keeping dieters on the path to success.

People who take advantage of virtual fitness instruction, lifestyle counseling, food logs, and the like have an edge, albeit a small one, in the amount of weight they lose, according to a Japanese study published in the International Journal of Obesity.

The research examined 23 weight control programs and compared those with a Web component to those without. Patients who utilized Internet support lost an average of a pound and a half more than participants in non-Web programs, the researchers reported.

It may not sound like much, but with obesity on the rise and obesity-related health problems hitting businesses harder than ever, it’s something that shouldn’t be ignored.

At the very least, the findings underscore the importance of support … virtual or otherwise … for people who are trying to lose and maintain weight and make healthy lifestyle changes.

Encourage your employees to track their daily calories, including those burned and those consumed, and to share their triumphs and setbacks as well as any secrets to success they learn along the way.

Fighting the obesity epidemic and improving the future health of America is a group effort, and one that’s worth every minute you spend promoting it.

Health News This Week:
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Global health experts: Healthier living could cut millions of cancer cases

Heart disease, type 2 diabetes, even cancer … understanding the risk factors and what can be done to decrease them greatly improves the odds of avoiding these diseases entirely or at least lessening their severity and improving one’s long-term outlook.

Particularly in the case of cancer, early detection is key. The success of treatment may hinge on how soon the disease is diagnosed and how quickly treatment is started.

Prevention requires careful management of one’s health habits, including undergoing routine medical screenings as frequently as is recommended (more, if you’re in a high-risk category).

According U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stats highlighted by Trust for America’s Health, the majority of chronic diseases could be prevented through lifestyle and environmental changes. For instance:

Taking steps to raise awareness of disease prevention among your staff members is one of the most important things a corporate wellness professional can do. Not only do such measures potentially save your employees’ lives, they’re also intertwined with the positive lifestyle changes you’re in the habit of promoting on a daily basis.

If your workers won’t be scared into making those changes based solely on the desire to avoid illness, perhaps they’ll be swayed by the bonuses: feeling better, looking better, and living longer.

Stress comes in many forms, from many directions, and can affect everything from physical health to mental well being to the ability to function at work.

For employers, whether stress is work-related or not matters less than its severity and the effect it has on workers’ productivity.

Repercussions from stress can increase absenteeism or decrease the quality of work the sufferers are putting out. They may show up to work but struggle to focus. They may make more mistakes because they’re distracted or sleep-deprived.

Recent research shows that stressed-out people seek more medical care than their low-stress counterparts, not to mention that work-related stress is on the rise.

According to PsychCentral, “In the United States, recent polls found that 70 percent of American workers consider their workplace a significant source of stress, whereas 51 percent report job stress reduces their productivity.”

The effectiveness of stress relief techniques varies from person to person, but here are some basics from the Mayo Clinic:

1. Get active
Physical activity pumps up your feel-good endorphins and refocuses your mind on your body’s movements, improving your mood and helping the day’s irritations fade away.

2. Meditate
Meditation instills a sense of calm, peace and balance that benefits both your emotional well-being and your overall health.

3. Laugh
Laughter fires up and then cools down your stress response and increases your heart rate and blood pressure, producing a good, relaxed feeling.

4. Connect
Social contact is a good stress reliever because it can distract you, provide support, help you weather life’s up and downs, and make you feel good by doing good.

5. Assert yourself
Learn to say no to some tasks or to delegate them.

6. Do yoga
Yoga brings together physical and mental disciplines to achieve peacefulness of body and mind, helping you relax and manage stress and anxiety.

7. Sleep
The quality and amount of sleep you get affects your mood, energy level, concentration and overall functioning.

8. Journal
Writing out thoughts and feelings can be a good release for otherwise pent-up emotions.

9. Get musical
Listening to or playing music is a good stress reliever because it provides a mental distraction, reduces muscle tension and decreases stress hormones.

10. Seek counsel
Therapy may be a good idea if stress leaves you feeling overwhelmed or trapped, if you worry excessively, or if you have trouble carrying out daily routines or meeting responsibilities at work, home or school.