Promoting Healthy Lifestyles at Workplaces (Published in The Guardian of 16/5/2017)
Your company depends on a healthy workforce to be productive and sustainable. To ensure that your team stays healthy, it is essential to promote a culture that emphasizes prevention and wellness. What are your strategies to empower your team members to take charge of their own health?
Executives need to look at themselves as role models for their companies. The population working under them looks to them to see what they are doing – taking a proactive approach to health and wellness sets a great example for others.
What is lifestyle?
Lifestyle is a way used by people, groups and nations and is formed in specific geographical, economic, political, cultural and religious context. It includes day to day behaviors and functions of individuals in job, activities, diet and sleep.
According to WHO, 60% of factors to individual health and quality of life are correlated to lifestyle. Unhealthy lifestyle leads to illness, disability and even death. Problems like Cancers, Type 2 Diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular diseases, overweight, joint and skeletal problems, violence and so on, can be caused by unhealthy lifestyle.
Unhealthy lifestyle is represented by poor diet, smoking, alcohol consumption, drug abuse, stress. lack of physical activity, lack of adequate sleep and coupled with the overuse and misuse of technology has a significant influence on mental and physical well-being of individuals.
Why should businesses be concerned?
No organization can be successful in the competitive market without healthy and productive employees.
Tanzania NCD Strategy reports 26% prevalence of hypertension and 9% prevalence of type 2 Diabetes – both are categorized as lifestyle diseases.
According to the Tanzania Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 2010, there is a 16% probability of Tanzanians dying from lifestyle diseases in the age group of 30 -70 – which is an economically productive group.
Companies as a microcosm of society is in the best position to change mindsets, reduce health risks and promote healthy lifestyle so as to become sustainable over time. All it takes is a resolve to establish and promote a healthy workplace.
Healthier workforce is more productive and being recognized as an employer that takes health and well-being of employees seriously reflects positively on the reputation and culture of any organization
How Do You Promote Healthy Lifestyle at Workplaces?
Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine often used lifestyle modifications such as diet and exercise to treat diseases such as diabetes. He is often quoted with “Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food” and “Walking is man’s best medicine”.
Adopting healthy lifestyle is a simple process, requiring a conscious effort to mitigate health risks arising from physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, tobacco and alcohol consumption. The following 5 areas are ways your company can integrate healthy living initiatives into your work environment.
- Promote Physical Activity
Institute standing and walking meetings at workplace. Encourage a minimum of 30 minutes of walking, taking the stairs instead of elevators, start an activity campaign such as a 5k fun run/walk, schedule department or company-wide stretch breaks, provide opportunities for employees to meet and walk with others during lunch or after/before working hours.
- Eat Well and Be Active
Build awareness on the link between healthy eating/physical activity and mental health, share ideas for healthy eating while at work, and share tips on nutrition with shift-workers, develop regular communications on nutrition.
- Mind-Body Fitness
Help your employees practice mind-body fitness and build awareness of how our mental and physical health impact each other. Introduce yoga, tai-chi, meditation at workplace. Share suggestions for activities to do during assigned break times that can have positive impact on mental and physical health
- Reduce mental health stigma
Stop the stigma associated with mental illness. Build awareness on how to reduce it in your workplace and create a psychologically health and safe workplace. Educate management on the signs and symptoms of mental health issues. Help your leaders recognize the signs and symptoms of employees dealing with mental illness and to understand the stigma associated with mental illness and their role in reducing it in the workplace
- Ask the Expert
Bring in experts for interactive sessions with latest information on how to achieve and maintain a healthy lifestyle, practical workplace activities and management of specific medical conditions.
Reply back to bhakti@impactafya.com or call +255 754 694 643 with your feedback. We welcome your suggestions for corporate wellness tips you’d like to see covered in our future columns.
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