Boost health and well-being in your workplace
Where and how we work has changed greatly over the past year. And more changes are afoot as employees start to return to office-based working and flexible working becomes the norm for many businesses.
But no matter what the working arrangements are for your organisation, one thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of looking after employee’s physical and mental health and well-being.
We’ve developed a new Active Workplaces Guide that will inform, inspire, and guide organisations to make the most of physical activity in their workplace to support employee’s health.
The benefits of an active workforce
Improving the health and wellbeing of employees can have a direct and positive impact on organisations.
Businesses benefit from a workforce that is healthy and active. When employees suffer from poor physical and mental health, employers feel the impact. Recent research has shown that absence costs businesses over £14bn each year, and that over 15.4m days were lost to stress, anxiety and depression in 2017/2018. And that figure is likely to rise following the pandemic.
Supporting organisational priorities
The Active Workplaces Guide addresses many of the priority issues facing organisations that are seeking to support the health and wellbeing of their staff:
- How can we support and improve the mental health of our employees?
- How can we boost employee productivity?
- What can we do to support our older employees to maintain their health?
The Guide brings together all the information and resources employers need to support their teams to be more active, improve their physical and mental health, and boost productivity.
What’s in the guide?
This comprehensive guide has the information you need to get started on a tailored physical activity programme for your workplace, including:
- making the business case for why your organisation will benefit from a physical activity programme
- advice and guidance on how to engage your colleagues in the idea;
- active travel resources and tips;
- a policy template to help you craft a workplace activity programme that reflects the needs of your workplace;
- and much more.
Katie Tierney, Workplace Health Officer at Active Norfolk, says “The onset of the pandemic and the way businesses have had to adapt to new ways of working has changed how we think about workplaces.
We’ve developed this guide to provide easy-to-access resources and information that can help Norfolk businesses – wherever their employees are based – to do more to boost the health and wellbeing of their employees. The benefits to business in increased productivity are substantial, and employees benefit from improved mental and physical health, as well as the social opportunities that activity can provide.”
Packed with resources, ideas, and inspiration, the guide is useful for employers looking to support the health and wellbeing of their team, as well as employees interested in helping to develop programmes in their workplace.