Does your place of work strive to promote a healthy lifestyle? Employees typically spend the majority of their time awake at work, making the workplace an ideal setting to promote healthy habits. So, the natural question to ask would be: "What are the people in charge doing to ensure that their employees are not only reaching their full professional potential but also remaining healthy and free from non-communicable diseases such as heart disease and diabetes?"
The Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Directorate has released a set of guidelines that aim to aid employers in promoting health and wellbeing on their workplace so that both the business and its employees can thrive in all aspects.
Why promote health and wellbeing in the workplace?
It has been demonstrated that a healthy workplace environment increases productivity, lowers staff turnover, absenteeism and presenteeism, which occurs when ongoing physical and/or mental health conditions prevent employees from being fully productive at work, as well as lowers health care and insurance costs. Workplace health promotion (WHP) raises staff members' job happiness as well as their general health and wellness.
The guidelines offer advice on how to introduce family-friendly policies, as well as simple steps like lowering stigma surrounding mental health. It also tackles the promotion of healthy eating, physical activity, reducing sedentary time, tobacco and smoking cessation, breast feeding at the work place, alcohol and substance abuse, as well as navigating the way through remote working.
What kind of advice do the guidelines offer?
The main aim of the guidelines is to help employers see their employees holistically, not just from a technical perspective, but as individuals in need of support within various areas of their lives, including but not limited to mental health. By providing access to various programmes, as well as chances for more physical exercise and less inactive time, employers and employees may both reap various health advantages.
Workplaces have the chance to "nudge" or favourably affect employees' eating habits and enhance their health by making simple adjustments to the workplace food environment, such as restricting access to high in saturated fat, sugar and salt food and providing healthier food options. The Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Directorate can even assist in redesigning corporate canteens and encourage overweight or obese staff members to enrol in their free weight-management programme.
Further assistance is also provided ensuring that employees are given the proper ergonomic tools needed to not only thrive within a professional environment, but also maintain a healthy lifestyle while doing so from home.
An employee population that is healthier and more resilient results from the gradual, sustainable deployment of health promotion programmes. You can obtain a printed copy of the guidelines by sending an email to [email protected]
Further information on the various free services offered by Health Promotion & Disease Prevention Directorate to assist businesses in creating a healthy workplace can be found on www.healthpromotion.gov.mt or by phoning on 2326 6144/8007 3307.