Delphine Caprez-Cunningham

14 May 2012

The Corporate Health Achievement Award (CHAA) recognizes quality and strenghts of occupational and environmental health programs.

This year, global health care products manufacturer Johnson & Johnson won this most rigorous Health & Safety award, thanks to its long history of commitment to the workplace health and safety of its staff.

They also won this prestigious award thanks to their on-site health clinics and fitness centers and the fact that 90% of employees have access to 12 “culture of health” programs (tobacco-free, HIV policy, health profile, employee assistance, physical activity, medical surveillance, health promotion, stress management, cancer awareness, healthy eating, return-to-work, and travel health).

Learn more about how you can improve your health and wellness program in order to enter into this global health and wellness competition.

Delphine Caprez-Cunningham

3 May 2012

Delphine Caprez-Cunningham

24 April 2012

The perfect green economy would not generate pollution or waste and would be hyper-efficient in its use of energy, water, and materials. Does your workplace health program measure up?

Using this green utopia as a benchmark would mean that currently there are few, if any, green jobs, green workplaces, or green corporate health programs. A more realistic approach defines green jobs and green health and wellness programs as those that contribute to maintaining or restoring environmental quality and avoiding future damage to the Earth’s ecosystems. In other words, any workplace health program is a potentially green program depending on who runs and manages it.

This year, the World Day for Safety and Health at Work (28 April) focuses on green jobs,
and how to promote safety and health in a green economy. So how can you make your workplace health program greener and safer for the environment, your staff, and ultimately yourself?
As part of your health program, encourage your staff to:

1. ‘Downcycle’ paper as opposed to recycle it.
The greenest paper is actually no paper at all. Encourage participants to keep their documents in their computer, and read documents and emails on their screen. If you run health seminars as part of your workplace health program, ask your presenters to follow your green policy by not printing their presentations and simply send the materials to the participants by email. Research from GreenPrint shows that every employee working in an office uses an average of 680 grams of paper per day. And if important documents really need to be printed, ask your IT department to set up printer so it defaults to printing double sided, and select a ‘draft’ option to save ink.

2. Bring their own.
Whether it’s their own lunch in a reusable container or their own mug, let your staff know that it’s the greenest way to eat and drink at work. If you run a health expo with healthy cooking demonstrations, brief your presenters in advance so they only use reusable containers for their food samples. By simply using their own coffee cup every day instead of using paper cups, your staff will save 10.3kg of waste annually. Also, by recycling one aluminium can a day, they can save enough electricity to light a 100-watt bulb for three hours.

3. Green their commute.
When you walk or ride your bike to work, you burn fat, not fuel. Using public transport can also reduce your fuel bill, up to $1,500 per year per household, estimate GreenPrint. Did you know that American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic, which adds up to 3.7 billion hours and 23 billion litres of fuel waster in traffic each year.
And if you really need a four-wheel option, consider car-sharing, as this will save on fuel, reduce emissions, ease traffic congestion and reduce the demand for parking space. As part of your workplace health program, consider giving a bonus or incentive to bike and car-sharing commuters.

Test your green footprint by going on mygreenprint.org.

Delphine Caprez-Cunningham

18 April 2012

Delphine Caprez-Cunningham

13 April 2012

Awareness of mental illness may have increased, but Australian businesses are still failing to recognise and manage mental health risk in the workplace, according to new research.

According to a poll of ASX Top 300 companies, 40 percent of businesses do not perceive mental illness as a potential risk to their company. It is alarming knowing that almost 50 per cent of Australians will experience a mental health issues at some stage in their life, says SANE Australia.

Of those that did understand the risk, almost half admitted that their organisation did not have effective policies in place as part of their workplace health program to manage this risk.

Read on

To create a mentally healthy workforce, it’s important to work on building a supportive environment where staff feel valued and able to express any difficulties they may be having balancing their workloads.

Skills and resources to help them manage their time and address challenges positively should be made available through initiatives such as life/health coaching, and organisational work-life balance policies such as flexible working hours and job sharing should be put into practice where necessary. Offering Mentally Healthy seminars and booklets as part of your workplace health and wellness program can also help educate and empower your staff on this difficult topic.

Physical changes to the work environment such as a quiet relaxation room or a corporate gym where staff can take stress busting breaks can also make huge improvements to mental health, as can broader physical activity initiatives that will help employees to cope better with pressures at work.

By improving the overall wellbeing of your employees through appropriate corporate health initiatives, you can create a mentally healthy workplace where your staff is happier and more resilient, and organisational productivity thrives.

Delphine Caprez-Cunningham

28 March 2012

Strong and committed leadership can make things happen in the world of corporate health and wellness. They commit resources, and remove barriers and obstacles.

A good example to illustrate this is the creation of the 2012 Olympic Park in east London. The Park was built over 200 hectares of highly contaminated land, by 40,000 workers, who spent 70 million hours on this huge project. No accident happened during more than half of these hours, which is a record for the Olympic Park organisation, which puts this record down to very strong leadership. They stated that their commitment to their employees was to:

• Manage risks to their health and safety;
• Provide safe workplaces and systems of work;
• Provide information, instructions, training and supervision;
• Engage enthusiastically with staff, partners, and suppliers over these arrangements.

As reported in the Campaign Guide Healthy Workplaces: Working together for risk prevention published by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work and Healthy Workplaces.

In addition to these commitments, the CEO and the Chairman of the project agreed to join their forces and report on any major health and safety issues to the Olympic Delivery Authority board. Clear communication and strong leadership can definitely make a difference in the success of workplace health.

Delphine Caprez-Cunningham

21 March 2012

Delphine Caprez-Cunningham

13 March 2012

Loss in productivity due to obesity through absenteeism, presenteeism and premature death is estimated to be $6.4 billion a year, reports a 2010 research by Medibank Health Solutions..

Obesity in Australia: financial impact and cost benefits of intervention Medibank Research conducted by KPMG Econtech showed that the indirect costs associated with obesity include the impact of being absent from work (absenteeism) and being less productive at work than a healthy person (presenteeism). Absenteeism was found to be 14 % higher in obese employees compared with normal-weight employees in the working population. A study by the University of North Carolina reports that obese workers lose 13 more days of work due to work-related injuries and illnesses than their non-obese counterparts. These costs have an economic impact on the Australian economy, through productivity losses resulting in lower output.

The results of this research demonstrate that strategies aimed at reducing obesity in Australia could bring significant benefits to the economy, and strategies such as corporate health programs aimed at reducing obesity in Australia could bring significant benefits to the Australian economy and community.

What it means for your organisation is that you can’t ignore these alarming figures and have a major role to play in the fight against obesity.

In the face of a growing economic obesity epidemic, incorporating simple changes into seated workers’ daily lives could bring drastic reductions in the overall costs that incur to you as an employer, while providing immense health benefits to your employees’ health. Obesity can be treated using a range of methods and offering workplace health promotion programs aiming at lifestyle or ergonomic interventions is one of them.

Lifestyle InterventionsLifestyle interventions consist of a combination of dieting, physical activity and health/wellness coaching or counselling offered as part of a broader employee health program. KPMG’s report showed that the expected benefit of AU$2,846 is much greater than the expected cost of AU$1,081.

Ergonomic InterventionsSedentary workplace is a potentially hostile environment in terms of overweight staff member and obesity, according to a study presented in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.
Sedentariness is very different from not having a lot of physical activity and is related to the amount of time spent sitting. This has huge implications for your employees’ health and wellness who spend more than half a day – more than 6 hours – sitting.
Compared to workers of average or normal weight, obese workers spend 20 percent more time sitting at their workstation. It does raise the question whether the obesity rate comes from working in sedentary, seated jobs, or are these jobs preferred since the majority of Australians are obese or overweight?

According to Dr. James Levine of the Mayo Clinic, to reverse obesity, we need to develop corporate health strategies to increase standing and ambulating time by 2.5 hours per day and re-engineer our work. Dr Jennifer Buckley, post-doctoral fellow at the University of Adelaide confirmed that one of the intervention being trialled in Australia for office-bound staff is working at a desk while standing.

For more information on Corporate Health Program, contact Healthworks on 1300 90 10 90 (International: IDD 61-2-9954-1888 ) and be sure to quote: “post1176″ for eligibility of Healthworks latest online offers and Corporate Health initiatives.