|
February: Healthy Lifestyle Month
February is healthy lifestyle month! This means that there is an opportunity to emphasize valuing wellness, convenience and work-life balance in the workplace.
Life-Work Balance
Employees for whom lifestyle is a career anchor like to find a compromise between their personal needs, family needs and the requirements of their career. To take a holistic approach requires that care be taken of the whole person. One cannot detach the worker from the human being. This means that even the broader social and dynamics of employees, such as those related to personal and family lives, must be taken into account. Attention must be paid to a well-balanced work and family life. What needs to be taken care of proactively is thus "body, mind and soul".
Click here to read full article
|
|
The Workplace Wellness Alliance Making the Right Investment: Employee Health and the Power of Metrics
The Workplace Wellness Alliance (the Alliance) was launched by the World Economic Forum in 2009 to address the challenges of data collection and knowledge sharing globally around workplace wellness programmes and the calculation of return on investment (ROI) of such initiatives. Bringing together 150 member organizations from across nine industries, the Alliance has worked with its Leadership Board and select experts to identify key performance indicators, and started the collection of a global baseline of employee health metrics. In 2012, this effort covered almost two million employees across 125 locations.
This report presents some of the research and challenges around workplace wellness programme implementation and evaluation as well as results and lessons learned from the Alliance's data collection to date. It includes nine case studies showcasing different types of ROI perceived by companies around the world, illustrating that return goes beyond mere dollars in dollars out. In 2013, the Alliance will transition to its new home, the Institute of Health and Productivity Management.
|
|
Work Life balance
Young people are looking for careers where there are lifestyle balance that is inclusive of work and family. if a Company wants to be positioned to meet its customers' needs and have talent in the right position for future growth, it must develop an inclusive culture with tolerant, accepting and encouraging attitudes around work-life balance.
Millennials think and act differently from previous generations and the older generations will have to adapt some of the ways of thinking and leading. Millenials have high expectations for work and life, and as they enter the workforce, employers must evolve, using tools such as social media and work-life programmes to recruit, manage and motivate and retain these workforce additions.
|
|
Stress Management in the Workplace
Managers and Supervisors regard pressure as an inevitable part of their daily lives. Especially when decision making and guidance have to take place, a significant amount of stress may be experienced.
If Supervisors and Managers allow stress-tolerance levels to be exceeded, it would impair their own health and wellbeing. If the quality of the Managers' and Supervisors' lives are not as desired on account of excessive stress, it will also influence their daily lives outside the work situation.
|
|
A study of the relationship between health awareness, lifestyle behaviour and food label usage in Gauteng
Elizabeth Louise Kempen, Helene Muller, Elizabeth Symington, Tertia Van Eeden
Abstract
Background: The objectives of the study were to determine whether consumers who read food labels, were also more aware of health and lifestyle issues, in terms of nutrition and other health-related lifestyle behaviours, and whether there was a relationship between food-label reading, health awareness and lifestyle behaviour. A quantitative descriptive (survey) design was selected to investigate the relationship between food-label reading on the one hand, and health awareness and lifestyle behavior on the other.
Method: A two-stage, stratified-proportionate and systematic sampling strategy was applied to select a sample of 357 Gauteng respondents to complete a telephonic questionnaire. Respondents who were most likely to read food label information were selected. Food label information is prescribed by comprehensive label legislation. Data report on respondents' label-reading habits, attitudes towards health awareness, lifestyle behaviour and biographic data. Nonparametric analysis, scale reliability tests, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Bonferroni multiple comparisons of means tests were used to analyse the results.
Results: Results indicate that the two-thirds of respondents who, to some extent read nutritional information on food labels, were concerned about their personal health, were interested in health-related information, and followed a healthy lifestyle, such as regularly eating fresh fruit and vegetables, cutting back on alcohol, and other positive lifestyle behaviours. They were unsure about how their own knowledge of nutrition, and their understanding of nutrition information on food labels, compared with that of other consumers.
Conclusion: A relationship was found between patterns of reading food labels, health awareness and lifestyle behaviour. People who often read food labels were more health-conscious, and maintained a healthier lifestyle.
Click here to read the full report |
|
|
Employee Wellness Survey
Click on the link below to take part in our Wellness Survey and stand a chance to WIN 3 MONTH'S FREE SUBSCRIPTION TO OUR WEBSITE.
Results and the winner will be published in the March Newsletter.
|
|
Organisational Wellness vs Employee Wellness
Is organisational wellness the same as employee wellness? What is the definition of wellness? We constantly hear the word wellness used in conversations, at work or read it in newspapers and magazines. Surprisingly, there seems to be no universally acceptable definition of wellness.
The term wellness was introduced into business vocabulary about 30 years ago as a result of two developments in the United States: The upward spiral of healthcare costs and the increased societal emphasis on fitness and healthy lifestyles. Initially, the mission of wellness in the workplace was to coach employees through various channels in self-responsibility and lifestyle behaviours that influence one's health, quality of life, work performance and health care use throughout a lifetime, as defined by Rothman Howard in 1990.
Wellness is more than simply the absence of illness and/or disease. Wellness is a proactive and preventative approach that is designed to provide optimum levels of health, emotional and social functioning. Core to our understanding of wellness are three complementary concepts, which are:
- Health promotion,
- Prevention,
- The determinants of health (or factors that influence our health).
Health promotion is about encouraging individuals to make healthy lifestyle choices. The World Health Organisation defines health promotion as 'the process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health'.
Prevention is about preventing disease and injury, which can be described as 'activities aimed at reducing factors leading to health problems and injury.'
A growing body of evidence tells us that there are a number of interrelated factors that influence our health. These factors, called the determinants of health, include: income and social status, support networks, education, employment, working conditions, personal health factors and coping skills. The determinants of health form the foundation of a healthy organisation.
Click here to read the full article
|
Upcoming Events
Employment Equity Committee - NQF Level 4
4 & 5 March (Seats still available)
Midrand Conference Centre, Midrand
R4 100,00pp excl. VAT
25 & 26 March
Sica's Guesthouse, Berea, Durban
R4 100,00pp excl. VAT
4 & 5 April
Belmont Square Conference Centre, Cape Town
R4 100,00pp excl. VAT
Labour Relations - NQF Level 6
7 & 8 March (Seats still available)
Belmont Square Conference Centre, Cape Town
R4 100,00pp excl. VAT
4 & 5 April
Belmont Square Conference Centre, Cape Town
R4 100,00pp excl. VAT
11 & 12 April
Sica's Guesthouse, Berea, Durban
R4 100,00pp excl. VAT
18 & 19 April
Midrand Conference Centre, Midrand
R4 100,00pp excl. VAT
Download a Registration Form
Email a query
Contact:
Michelle du Toit
Tel: 011 4620982
|
|
