Taking steps

Promoting health and fitness at work.

	The introduction of workplace initiatives by responsible employers can make a significant difference to employee health and welfare. Many of those who have introduced and promoted regular exercise regimes have achieved noticeable reductions in weight amongst employees. One organisation encouraging staff to adopt a '10,000 Step Challenge' found that participants lost an average of six pounds over a 12 week period with 62 employees losing more than 10 pounds each. However, there are concerns in some companies that organised health and fitness activities can be insensitive, at best stigmatising those who don't take part or at worst, appearing discriminatory.

The solution for many has been to develop a range of voluntary activities supported by strategies that make the healthy choices easier to make.

Organisations in the oil and gas industry, where employees are working away from their home environments and distant from their normal routines and activity, have been particularly vigilant in providing staff with both the opportunity and the motivation to adopt healthy lifestyles.

Frontier Medical's Smart Start Campaign, initially developed for employees working in remote environments, is designed to achieve a proactive approach to health and well-being, through a tailored programme of initiatives that include smoking cessation, drug abuse strategies and stress management. Healthy eating is high on the agenda, and not just the provision of low fat, healthy food options but also programmes to motivate and support healthy eating choices. Companies need to tackle issues such as 'portion distortion', a trend that has seen standard portion sizes expand dramatically over the last 20 years.

Appropriate regular physical activity is a major component in tackling obesity although at least 60% of the global population fails to achieve the World Health Organisation's minimum recommendation of 30 minutes per day. Regular physical activity also helps prevent a range of other physical ailments including reducing anxiety and depression. It improves glucose metabolism, reduces body fat and lowers blood pressure.

As well as encouraging staff to take regular breaks, employers need to give guidance in how to use them. Designing programmes that are convenient and easily accessible rapidly increases participation in health and fitness programmes.

Successful management of an integrated health and fitness strategy has proven benefits for the health and well being of employees and direct results in improved output and decreased downtime due to employee illness.

For more information on Smart Start and health promotion see our Health Promotion page.