Improving physical health to help wellbeing at work
Everyone is aware of the importance of looking after your physical wellbeing – eating well, ensuring you get enough sleep and getting regular exercise can help counteract risks to your health and promote positive psychological wellbeing. However, the stress associated with the daily work environment can often prevent us from taking the initiative to ensure we are looking after ourselves correctly – and this can have a detrimental impact on organisational performance.
If we aren’t physically looking after ourselves (i.e. drinking too much, not getting regular exercise or enough sleep), this can affect our ability to make decisions; increase fatigue; increase apathy levels; reduce concentration, and lead to higher levels of absenteeism. Factors that can influence this further include long working hours and a sedentary workplace (e.g. at a desk all day). There are, however, some basic steps you can take – both as an individual and an organisation – to counter this and improve wellbeing, both in the workplace and overall.
1. Stand up! It’s amazing how much we are able to achieve when sitting at our desk: the modern workplace has eliminated the need to move around as often. According to the World Health Organisation, the average Brit spends 8.9 hours seated, with an average of 7.7 hours spent at a desk. This can increase the likelihood of you getting diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure or heart disease.
What can you do? Try and stand up for at least two hours a day. Whether that means, having a good stroll at lunch or answering the phone whilst standing. If you do this, you can increase muscle activity and burn more calories. Many work places have now introduced sit-stand desks now to help encourage this even further. Simple alternatives can also involve having update meetings standing up!
2. Promote healthy eating. Someone’s birthday in the office often means the obligatory birthday cake. Sugary snacks can be enjoyed in moderation but overdoing it – accompanied with a sedentary lifestyle – can lead to obesity and the associated risks.
What can you do? Introduce fruit and healthy snacks to the workplace. Have a communal fruit bowl that different teams or employees can take turns to donate to each week. Instead of having birthday cake, why not encourage a birthday lunch where everyone buys a healthy snack to bring in and enjoy communally at lunch time.
3. Encourage alternatives to alcohol. For many offices, a drink after work in the pub on Friday can be a great opportunity for socialising with colleagues and letting your hair down. Like sugary snacks, alcohol can be enjoyed in moderation, but if you find yourself overdoing it, it can have serious repercussions for your physical and mental wellbeing.
What can you do? Try alternatives to the pub to get groups of colleagues together who might not normally socialise by sharing a mutual interest or hobby. Encourage physical activities such as 5-aside football, netball, yoga or running clubs at lunch times or after work, or try a different tack such as knitting or book clubs.
These are just a few suggestions for some of the ways that you can start to think about changing the work environment to try and improve your physical, and ultimately, psychological wellbeing. Wellbeing Works often run self-care workshops as part of our wellbeing initiatives. These cover topics such as healthy eating, responsible drinking and exercise. For more information, and to find out how we can help, contact us today!
