A Health and Well-being Day is a unique opportunity to show employees that you’re investing in them.
Why is Health and Well-being important in the work place?
Happy healthy employees = Job Satisfaction
Job Satisfaction = Commitment, low staff turnover and low levels of sickness = Higher levels of productivity.
Most of our waking hours are spent at work, which means the working environment can play a big part in our health and well-being.
About 131 million working days were lost through absences due to sickness or injury in 2014. Stress and back pain are the two biggest causes of absence from work.
There are many things that workers can do not only to reduce their risk of work-related ill-health but also to use their time at work to boost their health.
Stress
About 15.2 million days were lost because of work-related stress, depression and anxiety in 2014. While not all stress is work-related, knowing how to deal with a lot of pressure at work is important.
What causes work stress?
The main reasons given for work stress include work pressure, lack of support from managers and work-related violence and bullying
The way you deal with stress can lead to unhealthy behaviours, such as smoking and drinking too much, which might increase your risk of heart disease.
What you can do to address stress?
Be active
If you have a stress-related problem, physical activity can get you in the right state of mind to be able to identify the causes of your stress and find a solution. “To deal with stress effectively, you need to feel robust and you need to feel strong mentally. Exercise won’t make your stress disappear, but it will reduce some of the emotional intensity that you’re feeling, clearing your thoughts and enabling you to deal with your problems more calmly.
Connect with people
A problem shared is a problem halved. A good support network of colleagues, friends and family can ease your work troubles and help you see things in a different way. The activities we do with friends help us relax and we often have a good laugh with them, which is an excellent stress reliever.
An organised Health and Well-Being day should involve some activity that not only gets the employees moving, but talking and socialising and relaxing.
Physical Health
Back pain
About 30.6 million working days were lost due to work-related back, neck and muscle pain and other musculoskeletal disorders in 2014. The main causes are poor posture or an awkward twisting movement (bending or reaching), or a combination of the two. In most cases, the best treatment is to stay active.
RSI
Repetitive strain injury (RSI) is more likely to occur if you spend long periods of work without a break, or if you sit on an uncomfortable chair or at a poorly arranged workstation. Incorrect technique when using a computer keyboard and mouse, mobile phone or hand-held device can all cause RSI.
Sitting
If you spend a lot of your time at work sitting at a desk, make sure you’re sitting in the right position in relation to your computer.
If you work on a computer a lot, it’s important to take regular breaks. That means for every hour at your keyboard you should rest for at least five to 10 minutes.
We all know we need to be more active, but there is increasing evidence that we need to spend less time sitting down as well.
Research has suggested that remaining seated for too long is bad for your health, regardless of how much exercise you do.
Studies have linked excessive sitting with being overweight and obese, type 2 diabetes, some types of cancer, and premature death. Prolonged sitting is thought to slow the metabolism, which affects the body’s ability to regulate blood sugar, blood pressure and break down body fat.
Many adults in the UK spend more than seven hours a day sitting or lying, and this typically increases with age to 10 hours or more. This includes watching TV, using a computer, reading, doing homework, travelling by car, bus or train – behaviours referred to as sedentary.
Regular Opportunities should be offered to your staff for activity to stimulate the body and mind.
Eating
We consume at least a third of our daily calorie intake while at work. What we eat and drink affects not just our health but our work performance too. If we don’t eat regular well-balanced meals or drink enough water, we may get headaches, feel sluggish or have difficulty concentrating.
Health and Well-Being days can also be an opportunity to educate your employees on nutrition and ways to avoid difficulties of work related health related issues.
Some activities that can help with all the work place Danger Zones include:
- Be active. Organise a challenge to find out how physical activity can improve employee’s health, and how much they should be doing.
- Eat well. Educate the staff to make sense of food labels, get a BMI check and consider their diet.
- Think well. Are your staff coping with stress in a healthy way? Train them in techniques to improve their mental well-being.
- Changing habits. Arrange for staff to play the beer goggles game and try the smokerlyzer test to learn about the impact of excessive alcohol intake and smoking on their health.
These activities would be best arranged in a different environment for maximum effect but could also be arranged in suitable work placed spaces.
Look after your staff and look after your business. Contact us today about helping you organise a Health and Well-being day.