The British Heart Foundation is today encouraging workers to ‘sit less and stand more’ as part of the ‘On Your Feet Britain’ campaign.
Almost half of women (45%) and almost two fifths of men (37%) working in UK offices spend less than 30 minutes a day walking around at work, according to statistics released ahead of the first On Your Feet Britain campaign to get office workers moving more.
Lisa Young, physical activity specialist for the British Heart Foundation, explained in an interview for Health & Safety Week, that people can make a big difference to their health and wellbeing by taking small steps.
“Things like obesity, lack of physical activity, and smoking can all increase people’s risk of heart disease,” she said. “By introducing small, simple opportunities into the workplace, we can encourage people to eat more healthily, be more active, and support them to stop smoking, which can actually help prevent the development of coronary heart disease.”
She explained that the responsibility for an employee’s health and wellbeing was a joint one between the employer and the individual.
“From a business perspective, there are rewards [for looking after employees’ health and wellbeing] as they’ll have a healthier, happier, more productive workforce, which can lead to things like reduced sickness absence and increased productivity, saving businesses huge amounts of money every year.”
In her interview with the editor of Health & Safety Week, Lisa also divulged the industries with the highest rates of eating poorly, smoking, drinking and not exercising enough.
In this episode of the Safety & Health Podcast, ‘Burnout, stress and being human’, Heather Beach is joined by Stacy Thomson to discuss burnout, perfectionism and how to deal with burnout as an individual, as management and as an organisation.
We provide an insight on how to tackle burnout and why mental health is such a taboo subject, particularly in the workplace.
