A Walking Workplace

Did you know that employee’s who go for a daily walk before or during the work day will be generally healthier, more productive and creative, and less likely to be absent or take sick-leave?

The Benefits of Regular Walking
Although the copious benefits of exercise have long been established, it may not be as widely recognised that even just performing regular brisk walking can provide significant benefits for an individual’s all round health and wellbeing.   

Some of the benefits of regular walking include:

• Increased cardiovascular and pulmonary fitness
• Improved and manageable blood pressure, cholesterol profile and blood sugar levels
• Improved and manageable joint and muscular pain or stiffness
• Strengthened bones and improved balance
• Increased muscle strength and endurance
• Reduced body fat.

A recent analysis of multiple studies that used a walking only intervention for a minimum of four weeks has shown an average relative reduction of 1.4% in body weight,  1.9% in percent body fat and a reduction of 0.8% in systolic and 2.0% in diastolic blood pressure from baseline measurements. It was also found that walking at a self-selected brisk pace can result in modest but meaningful increases in cardio respiratory fitness.

Primarily, these benefits will help manage or reduce the risk of chronic health conditions such as heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and osteoporosis. Research has also shown how exercise reduces the risk of some cancers, particularly bowel, with some suggestive evidence linking it to a reduced risk of lung, ovarian, breast and pancreatic cancers.

Regular walking can also help to relieve feelings of depression or anxiety, aid in better sleep and better digestion. And aside from the long list of health benefits, it is better for our environment by reducing car dependency. This makes it better for our hip pocket too!

How to Build More Walking into your Workday… 
Its easy! If you live too far from work to walk the whole way, get off public transport a few stops earlier or park the car at least one kilometre away and walk the rest of the way. Or get out for a half-hour walk at lunchtime and if you have a sedentary office job, get up and walk around at least once every hour and where possible use the stairs. 

Evidence shows that there are both direct and immediate benefits for organisations and employees to support and promote walking regularly.

Therefore, to help build regular walking into your daily routine, Wesley Corporate Health encourages businesses and employees to get involved in the Cancer Council National Walk to Work Day, on Friday 16 September 2011 and register their organisations as a Walking Workplace. 

The primary aim for the annual event, now in its 13^th year, is to get Australia walking again, but participants are also encouraged to become a fund-raiser for the Cancer Council in the fight against cancer. Please visit www.walk.com.au/ for more information on how to get your business involved in supporting this event.

Hydrated and Healthy: Seqwater Case Study

Seqwater’s “Be Healthy, Be Wealthy” staff wellbeing program has incorporated initiatives such as:

• Wellbeing Assessments
• Executive Health Evaluations
• Skin checks
• Flu vaccinations
• ‘10,000 Steps’ exercise challenge
• Health seminars & awareness programs such as Sun Safety, Men’s Health Week, Mental Health Week, 'Think Safe - Drink Safe' and Summer Safety

Out of 51 participants who participated in 2009 and 2011 Wellbeing Assessments the following results were found:

• 55% experienced weight loss
• 49% had improved cholesterol
• 39% had significant improvements in blood pressure (14% had a worse result)
• 29% went from unacceptable to acceptable Physical Activity
• 69% improved their nutrition or remained at the same desired score
• 20% improved their alcohol consumption
• Out of the 6 participants who smoked in 2009, 2 people gave up smoking

Tracy Co, the Seqwater program coordinator is pleased to see the results and had the following feedback about the program:

“Thank you for running the Wellbeing Assessments again this year. The sessions were very well received and a number of staff commented on how the Wellbeing Assessments in 2009 helped them with health improvement and losing weight. WCH consultants provided practical advice and were very knowledgeable and professional. The consultants were absolute life (and time) savers when it came to setting up, tailoring and promoting the health programs, especially when organising the programs with our staff across multiple sites! Through the WCH report from the Wellbeing Assessments in 2009, we were able to highlight the health “hot spots” to focus on. The programs from WCH have supported the culture of health and safety we are continuing to build at Seqwater, through a very individualised and tailored approach."

If you would like WCH’s expertise to deliver a results-based wellness program, email wellness@weshealth.com.au or contact Louise Reeve on (07) 3234 2609.

Join Wesley's Biggest Morning Tea

Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea is a major fundraising event created by Cancer Council Australia, to support the fight against cancer. It has been one of Australia’s largest and most successful campaigns, raising over $50 million dollars since its first cup of tea in 1994.

Wesley Corporate Health is conducting our own Morning Tea and you can donate online at our event page: http://qld.cancercouncilfundraising.org.au/wesleymorningtea

Who wouldn’t enjoy morning tea? It is a tasty, fun and easy way to raise money for cancer research, prevention and support services for cancer patients and their families.  Just one cup of tea and one dollar at a time can make a difference. There is no better excuse to take a break with your workmates or enjoy a delicious morning tea over a staff meeting!

The official date for the event is Thursday May 26, but you can hold your morning tea any day and at any time in May and June.

Some suggestions for a fun and successful morning tea include:

• Have a bake off competition
• Get staff to submit their healthiest morning tea recipe to create a company recipe book, which can be sold internally with a percentage of proceeds going to Cancer Council
• Request an entry fee donation to the morning tea
• Theme the event with a prize for the best effort

For more information on hosting an Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea event at your workplace, visit the website: http://www.biggestmorningtea.com.au/.

Cancer is a leading cause of death in Australia, with 1 in 2 people being diagnosed before the age of 85. An estimated 114,000 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in Australia in 2010, with the most common being prostate, colorectal (bowel), breast, melanoma and lung cancer.

It is estimated that more than 4000 cancer deaths annually are a result of poor diet, alcohol consumption, physical inactivity and being overweight. Cancer Council Australia believes that around half of all cancer cases can be prevented by leading a healthy lifestyle such as:

• Eating a healthy balanced diet
• Doing regular physical activity
• Maintaining a healthy weight
• Avoiding smoking
• Avoiding alcohol consumption or limiting to two standard drinks a day for both men and women, with two alcohol free days

Regular screening is also recommended to help detect cancer at an early stage when treatment is likely to be more effective. Screening programs are available nation wide for breast, cervical, bowel and prostate cancer. For more information on cancer facts and screening programs visit the Cancer Council website: http://www.cancer.org.au/home.htm.

For more information on Skin Cancer screening services, please visit the Wesley Corporate Health Website: http://www.weshealth.com.au/default.asp?PageID=68&n=Onsite+Skin+Checks 

Get your business involved in the World’s Greatest Shave

Preparations have begun at the Leukaemia Foundation for their biggest annual fundraising event – The World’s Greatest Shave.

On the 10th-12th March, staff in businesses around Australia will volunteer to have their hair shaved or coloured all in the name of a good cause.

The Leukaemia Foundation states that every hour, someone in Australia is diagnosed with leukaemia, lymphoma or myeloma. Every two hours, someone dies from one of these blood cancers. Money raised through the event is vital as it is directed towards research to improve treatment protocols and support services for patients and their families.

Hosting an event in your office can be a great morale boost as teams can cheer on their brave colleagues or departments compete to raise the most money.

For more information on the event, or how to get your office involved, visit the ‘Taking part at work’ Shave portal on the World’s Greatest Shave website.

The World’s Greatest Shave in March follows World Cancer Day, held on the 4th of February.   These international awareness days can serve as a timely reminder of the impact of cancer across our community, business, families and social networks.

The onset of some cancers can be prevented through lifestyle modifications.  Factors such as smoking (lung, throat, mouth etc), sun exposure (skin cancer, melanoma) and asbestos (mesothelioma) are all risk factors that can be avoided. Leading a healthy lifestyle can help too – consume a diet rich in antioxidants, fruits and vegetables, Omega 3’s and low in animal fats (preferably organic). Exercising and maintaining low stress levels are also beneficial.

In addition, early detection can drastically increase the success of cancer treatment. We should all maintain vigilance in ensuring that we are up to date with the recommended tests for our age and gender. A reminder list is provided below:

Health and wellbeing program update from the Federal Government

A new report titled ‘Effective Health and Wellbeing Programs’, has recently been released by Comcare, the Australian Government agency that works in partnership with employees and employers to reduce the human and financial costs of workplace injuries and disease in the Commonwealth jurisdiction. The report provides a review of the literature in relation to the planning, design, implementation and evaluation of health and wellbeing programs, both nationally and internationally. It also provides simple guidance to assist organisations and workplaces in designing, developing, implementing and evaluating such programs.

The report summarises the overwhelming support for the inclusion of health and wellbeing programs in the workplace that is presented in the literature. The economic costs of poor health on absenteeism, presenteeism and personal injury claims are widely documented and justify the importance of targeted workplace interventions to improve employee health.

One could argue that health and wellbeing programs have become a way for employers to maintain their corporate image and exist as employee attraction and retention strategies however their true value is much deeper than that. Workplace interventions that target some of the underlying causes of chronic disease can improve the health and quality of life of individuals.

The report reiterates that any workplace health and wellbeing program must have an evidenced based approach to the design, implementation and evaluation of all initiatives to ensure a solid return on investment. “Programs will only be effective in enhancing the health status of the workforce when the interventions address both individual and environmental influences”. That means, designing a program that will encompass three key focuses:

• Occupational Health and Safety or Environmental initiatives are those that target the safety of the workplace or those that change the physical environment. For example, policies involving hazard minimization or the addition of onsite facilities like showers or bike racks or an improvement to kitchen and eating facilities.
• Organisational Change or Culture interventions change the way the work is organized and emphasise the relationship of work to psychological health. Some of these could include working hours and flexibility, job content, morale, workplace engagement, leadership, peer interaction and conflict management.
• Voluntary Health Practices - involve the health and lifestyle decisions and behaviours made by an individual and include smoking status, exercise and nutrition habits or stress management.

The report confirms that the best programs are “well planned, have an early intervention/ prevention focus, are designed and developed with very strong ownership and input from workers, are targeted at the stated needs of workers, suitable for the workplace environment, are implemented and managed within a strong OHS policy framework and are regularly monitored and evaluated.”

Wesley Corporate Health specialise in the design and delivery of effective workplace health and wellbeing programs. To find out more information, please contact Kristen Demedio on 3234 2606 or visit our website: www.weshealth.com.au