Firing up workforce health and fitness

The sedentary nature of most jobs automatically increases the risk of developing many life-threatening illnesses. Add stress, poor nutrition and long working hours, and it’s a dangerous equation. Teresa Russell looks at two companies that are trying to change that

20 Feb 2006

The sedentary nature of most jobs automatically increases the risk of developing many life-threatening illnesses. Add stress, poor nutrition and long working hours, and it’s a dangerous equation. Teresa Russell looks at two companies that are trying to change that

A quick glance through Australia’s health statistics is a sobering exercise. Some 56 per cent of Australians are overweight or obese. Nearly 80,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed each year. More than 430,000 Australians are diabetic, with a further 350,000 believed to be suffering from the condition without knowing it. More than 21 per cent of Australians have cardiovascular disease, a condition that claims a life every 10 minutes.

Although these figures are depressing, they needn’t be. Many of these illnesses are preventable. More than two-thirds of all cancers could be prevented by lifestyle changes. Not smoking, managing high blood pressure and cholesterol, losing weight and increasing physical activity can also limit the risk of developing cardiovascular disease. Even the onset of osteoporosis (and therefore, fractures in the elderly) can be delayed or prevented by early intervention.

More companies are taking up the challenge to make their workforces fit and healthy. Benefits flow to both the individual and the company when employees are in good physical condition.

Building health at Boral

Boral Ltd, the Australian building resources materials company, employs 10,000 people. Its workforce is mostly blue collar, predominantly male with an average age of 45 years. Eighteen months ago, the company started to roll out free annual health assessments to all employees, making it the largest completed health promotion program in the country to date.

Cate Hathaway, Boral’s general manager of workers’ compensation, says the management committee took the view that it is fundamentally the right thing to do as a company. There were several motivators for introducing free annual health assessments, along with targeted health seminars and a health resource centre –the latter available to employees’ families as well. Boral expected benefits such as sustaining the current workforce and decreasing absenteeism would result. “As a company, we strive for excellence in safety, with a priority for employees’ health and wellbeing, so there was a strong focus on occupational health and safety when introducing this,” she said.

Like many companies that have grown through acquisition, different divisions used to provide a range of health and fitness offerings. Two years ago, a Boral project team defined what it wanted throughout the organisation, then went to tender. Some of the requirements for the chosen provider included the ability to deliver the program nationally (often to remote locations), to offer the complete range of services and to have project management experience. The roll out for 10,000 employees needed to run smoothly. The ability to provide meaningful reports was also vital.

Hathaway stresses that all of the results are confidential between the provider and the employee. Boral gets a top level report, by business, on what cardiovascular disease risk factors exist compared to the Australian population. “Results from the first round of health assessments were not too dissimilar from Australian norms. We have been able to identify health issues by site and target health interventions appropriately,” she says.

Health seminar topics conducted through Boral in the last 12 months have included nutrition, men’s health, exercise and sleep management. The latter is very important to the company from an OHS perspective, as fatigue is a workplace safety issue.

According to Hathaway, it is difficult to measure return on investment for the program, dubbed BWell, because there are so many variables and a number of years of trend data is needed for analysis. “When we were building the business case, we looked at US studies of similar businesses which showed an average cost to benefit ratio of 2.92. Although we’d like to be able to measure the full impact of ROI, it won’t ever be a deciding factor in whether the program continues,” she said.

The whole company is undergoing its second round of assessments. Anecdotal evidence to date suggests BWell is a very positive employee engagement tool. “Employees feel they are being valued by the company, there is a higher health awareness in the organisation and some individuals have had impressive weight loss,” says Hathaway.

Accor, health and hospitality

Accor is the world’s largest hotel, tourism and corporate services group. It has more than 120 hotels in the Pacific region under the brands Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure, All Seasons, Ibis, Formule 1 and Base backpackers. The company employs about 9,000 people throughout its properties in Australia and the South Pacific, including 140 in its Sydney regional office.

Darryl Prince, Accor’s general manager, human resources for Asia Pacific, says his organisation has been developing its health and wellbeing strategies in consultation with a single provider for the last three to four years. Accor’s motivation for introducing a health and fitness was the physical demands that a career in hospitality puts on its employees. “You need high energy to work in hospitality. There are demanding customers, demanding hours and you can be around food and alcohol all the time,” says Prince.

Prince has approached the issue through annual week-long corporate health expos held at various sites. All employees can have mini health assessments on site, attend lectures on weight control, stress management and nutrition, have skin checks and ergonomic consultations, and participate in yoga or other exercise sessions. Flu vaccinations are available to everyone each year. Accor also sponsors employees who participate in touch football competitions and the BRW triathlons.

Three groups of hotel general managers, none of whom had cycling experience, have organised Melbourne to Sydney, Auckland to Wellington and Adelaide to Sydney bike rides in the last few years. As well as attracting much attention inside the company, the rides have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for charity.

Executive health assessments are offered to all senior staff. “If you can prevent a senior member of the organisation from having a health issue, you not only have a very positive individual result, you also get top level commitment to the program,” says Prince.

Accor is using last year as its baseline. “The key ticket items we’ve identified are stress and smoking. The introduction of the smoke-free workplace legislation has helped quite a bit. It will be interesting to see if the initial rush straight after the intervention has any long lasting benefits,” he says.

Despite this cautionary note, Accor has seen an increase in the numbers participating in the expos each year and a positive decline in staff turnover.

In an interesting development, Prince is about to start working with Accor’s health and fitness provider on a strategic planning issue of global significance. “We’re looking at systems and processes that will need to be in place to be prepared to protect our employees from a [bird flu] pandemic. It’s just another part of the culture of looking after our people and letting them know that the company that employs them has their best interests at heart,” he says.

Items covered by Boral’s health assessment:

• Non-modifiable risk factors

• Cholesterol

• Diabetes

• Blood pressure

• Body weight

• Physical activity

• Stress, anxiety, depression and loneliness

• Smoking

• Alcohol

• Back care

• Vision and lung function