Are Your Employees Looking After Their Health? How You Can Help

A recent study carried out by the Health Insurance Group and the Wellbeing People highlighted the fact that UK workers are still not doing enough to look after their health and wellbeing. When looking at preventable ill health causes, such as poor nutrition, limited exercise, drinking too much alcohol and smoking too much, the results were startling.

Over 16,000 people were studied for the experiment – a mix of men and women. Results showed that one in five men admitted that they never eat their recommended five a day of fruit and vegetables. Whilst women were more aware of eating the right food, results highlighted the fact that one in four women are not carrying out any exercise at all.

It’s apparent that more needs to be done to encourage UK workers to look after their health, especially those who work 9-5 jobs in an office and therefore are sat down for the majority of their time.

If you’re an office manager reading this, we think there are a handful of things you can do to improve the health and wellbeing of your employees. Here are just a couple of our ideas!

Encourage Exercise

You don’t need to follow your employees around and force them to visit a gym, but there are things that you can do to encourage exercise and make fitness seem more fun. You can do something simple like making a deal with a local gym so that you can offer your employees discounted memberships. They can often be expensive, so giving it to them at a lower price can often be very tempting.

If this is a little too expensive, you can also arrange fun team sporting activities. It’s usually more fun than being cooped up in a gym, and it also means your employees can bond outside of work.

Provide Water for the Office

A lot of office workers will admit that they drink far too much tea or coffee. Whilst hot drinks aren’t too damaging in moderation, they really should be drinking much more water instead. You can encourage your staff to drink more water and stay hydrated by having a fresh source of water for them to use.

You can easily install water coolers and water dispensers into your office, so that people have water at all times. If they can easily access water, they are more likely to choose it over buying fizzy drinks.

Introduce Standing Desks

We recently wrote a post on the introduction of standing desks, which are desks which allow you to comfortably complete your work whilst stood up. Since the average office worker spends 8-9 hours each day sat down at their desk, it’s not surprising that this has caused problems for people’s health and posture. The stand up desk is height adjustable so people don’t have to crouch to use their computers.

We love the idea of these desks, which will allow your employees to alternate between sitting and standing throughout the day.

Make Sure People Take Their Breaks

Breaks are legally required for a reason, which means that your employees should really be taking the recommended amount each day. 8-9 hours is a long time to spend in front of a computer, so it’s essential that they take the time to go elsewhere when they can. You can help by making sure that your staff aren’t skipping all their breaks, and that they are stepping away from the computer – even if it’s just for a short period!

Looking after the health and wellbeing of your employees will also encourage more productivity in the workplace. Healthy staff are more motivated, and therefore are likely to get more work done within the working week.

If you feel like your office needs a change in design or office refurbishment to assist in helping keep your workers happy and healthy, we can help you out.

Officescape specialises in office interior design and office refurbishment in London, helping you create your perfect office design. For more information on the services we provide, please don’t hesitate to contact us. You can give us a call on 01553 811 833 and a member of our team will be happy to help.