Just because there’s a gym or two in every town these days and that the benefits of health and fitness have played a steadily more significant part in daily life ever since the Green Goddess hit our TV screens on BBC Breakfast Time in the 1980s that doesn’t mean we are all of a sudden a healthier nation.
How many individuals do you know who are helping gymnasium chains stay in business by doing nothing more strenuous than carrying a membership card in their wallet?
What relevance is that to you and your company, you’re thinking? Let me tell you. According to the Confederation of British Industry’s (CBI) Annual Absence Survey published in 2006, ill health and absenteeism costs UK business something in the region of GB pound 13 billion every year.
Employers are to blame
In the same year as this survey, GPs noticed a dramatic increase in the number of people needing to be signed off work for seven days or more. Those same GPs feel that employers are to blame, with nine out of every ten doctors blaming bosses for failing to take responsibility over their employees’ health and well-being.
Now, take yourself back to that sinking feeling you experienced the last time one of your members of staff called in ill, or was signed off on long-term sick leave. What value would you then be prepared to place on their health and well-being?
Most businesses have experienced the full-time malingerers and work-shy types who, every so often, slip through the employment net. However, it’s those who take their job seriously the hard workers that need looking after. Often, they are most at risk. The Health and Safety Executive’s 2005 Survey of Workplace Absence, Sickness and Ill Health found that 68% of private sector employees described their job as ‘stressful’ or ‘very stressful’ surely a contributory factor in the 13.8 million working days lost to stress-related illness in the UK during the past year alone?
The majority of research findings into workplace health promotion programmes report that their main economic benefits include reduced absenteeism and staff turnover, increased productivity, improved morale, less accidents and a greatly enhanced corporate image.
Protecting people and assets
What, then, can we do about the health and fitness of the security sector’s managers and operatives? A sector that has, at its heart pun intended! the basic remit to ‘physically’ protect both people and assets?
Essentially, health, fitness and well-being must be part of the fabric of the company. If your culture is office-based, or predicated on multiple static sites, then you have a great challenge ahead!
As a predominantly office-based business, we at Momentum Security provide a very cost-effective private health insurance scheme which, in turn, offers large reductions for membership at two national gym chains and pays a cash bonus to the employee if they have a ‘no claims’ year. Further bonuses can be had by taking more exercise or, for example, by giving up smoking.
We also promote internal and external health and fitness events, from baseball in the park during the summer through to five-a-side football right up to at the more extreme end of the scale sponsored half-marathons and adventure races.
It’s always a challenge to make employees commit ‘outside of work’ time to these activities but, by first selecting and then working with some ‘internal champions’ who’ll lead the way and by persisting with your vision you can succeed.
One of the more recent successes of our own incentivised health and fitness scheme is that we’ve experienced an increase in corporate membership to the gym of around 20%, with people attending on a regular basis. Also, one of our most hardened smokers recently attended a Stop Smoking seminar and has now successfully kicked the habit.
Statistics tell the story
In a recent study, the Prudential found that 78% of employees questioned believe it’s their employer’s responsibility to look after their health as co-workers, while a similar percentage felt more valued as an employee of the firm simply because health cover was provided. This isn’t meant as a sales pitch for private health insurance. It’s simply an indicator of how employees feel, and what you can do to prevent the ‘sick leave sinking syndrome’ mentioned earlier.
When compared with the Prudential’s findings, it’s ironic to note that the CBI found 70% of company bosses surveyed don’t view their employees’ health as their responsibility.
That brings us neatly to another health-related analogy ‘prevention is better than cure’ (in other words, whether we take the risky, short-term view of dealing with health issues on a case-by-case basis or invest some time and resources in trying to prevent such occurrences from disrupting the business).
The ‘up front’ costs of gym subsidies, private health insurance and employee benefits, etc are the obvious factors involved, but if they can reduce the eight days per year that the average employee takes off sick then those outlays are swiftly offset.
Promoting health and well-being
What’s more, in a particularly cost-conscious industry such as the security sector there are other ways in which you might promote health and well-being. These can include:
These ‘events’ don’t necessarily have to be a regular occurrence. Even one every year will help remind your employees that their health and well-being is important to you as their employer and/or manager/director.
Factor-in the less tangible benefits associated with good health and fitness including enhanced performance, drive and vitality and the initial costs of establishing a healthy workplace will be insignificant when you look at the new profits being generated.
