Preventing ill health

In the last week, this report has been published by Bupa in conjunction with The Work Foundation, Rand Europe and C3 Collaborating for Health. Its purpose is to identify how employers, government and providers of workplace health interventions can respond to the challenge working age ill health poses to UK productivity and public health.  It’s a straight forward summary of many of the current issues and makes some recommendations that resonate with me and what I’ve been saying for a while now.   (more…)

A large employer in the transportation sector has recently gone to print promoting the fact that they have just arranged an employer paid healthcare cash plan for their 4,800 employees. To quote their spokesperson, ‘We felt that the time was right to introduce a wellbeing strategy to provide our staff with the help and benefits they will really use to help them manage their everyday healthcare bills’.

To be fair, I don’t know whether this purchase is part of a wider wellbeing strategy but to take the spokesperson’s words at face value, I get the impression that they believe this is their strategy.  What are they doing to prevent their employees from having to claim in the first place and then having to pay for it? (more…)

I’ve just been approached by someone working on behalf of the British Heart Foundation, asking if I can make reference on the Shandwell website to their Health at Work programme which promotes health and wellbeing in the workplace. As part of the programme, members get free information, resources and practical tips on how to encourage their colleagues on getting fit and active and eating well whilst at work. There’s also information on wellbeing at work to help colleagues enjoy work more and improve their working relationship with other colleagues. See their website www.bhf.org.uk/healthatwork 

I’m happy to do it – so job done.

Tesco has just announced that it is to add a link on its benefits website to the free NHS MidLife health check,aimed at getting their middle aged staff to think about their health and how to improve it; it is being supported by a promotional programme over the next three months. Having had a look at it, it’s quite similar to a number of low- tech commercial online health check services who must be disappointed that such a big potential client has decided to promote something from the NHS.  The question is, what will Tesco, their employees and the NHS all get out of it? (more…)

Hats off to Investors in People for adding a Health and Wellbeing award to their offering. Investing in health and wellbeing does not mean having to buy or pay for something but it certainly does mean investing in people. The two go hand in hand.  If you get a chance, register to use their self check tool. It asks some great questions that many organisations have avoided or been unable to answer in the positive. Questions such as: (more…)

Health Work and Wellbeing have announced the launch of the new workplace wellbeing tool. For those who have been following all the initiatives from the Government following the Black report, it is the re-engineered business health check tool that was originally created by PWC.  Remember that mass of spreadsheets? I don’t think one single employer used it to any effect.  The new tool was designed by Capgemini and I made some suggestions when they asked me to get involved at a couple of their workshops. (more…)

Brian Souter, CEO of Stagecoach has pledged £1m in a voluntary heart health screening programme for employees in its UK bus division. Employees with 3 or more years of service will be given the opportunity to undergo the voluntary assessment of their cardiovascular health along with advice on ways to improve their heart health. He is quoted as saying ‘ This kind of personal health check is often only available to senior executives. We felt it was important to extend the service to our frontline employees who serve our customers every day’ (more…)