Healthy, wealthy and wise

With 90 per cent of Australians at risk of developing a chronic disease and the workplace being where most of us spend up to half our waking hours, it's only right employers become drivers of change.

In any cohort of 10 Australian workers at least three are likely to suffer from a chronic illness such as obesity, diabetes or cardiovascular disease.

It’s an astounding figure.

Even more concerning, however, is research from the organisation that unearthed that data – the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare – which shows that just one in that group of 10 leads a lifestyle that can help reduce the risk of developing such a disease.

The other nine don’t consume the recommended daily portion of vegetables, undertake sufficient exercise or simply step away from their desks often enough – putting them on the path towards poor health.

Poor lifestyle choices affect more than simply the individuals concerned. ‘Unhealthy’ workers take nine times more sick days than their healthy counterparts and are only one third as productive when they do make it to work.

Clearly the case for employers to improve workers’ health makes good business sense; not only will it improve the performance of the workforce, but the introduction of health and wellbeing programs is said to lure candidates of a higher calibre and improve retention rates.

Employers also need to take some responsibility for deteriorating worker health as they place more demands on staff – including longer hours – and sedentary working becomes the norm.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, almost 60 per cent of Australians don’t undertake enough physical activity to incur health benefits. The recommended level of activity is 150 minutes per week over five sessions.

That’s just 30 minutes each weekday.

In a recent Weight Watchers survey seeking to identify why people weren’t getting active, a resounding 74 per cent recited the ‘not enough hours in the day’ mantra.

Chairman of newly established Healthier Workplaces WA, Trevor Shilton, says that’s nonsense.

“Saying there’s not enough time sometimes means it’s not a priority,” he says.

“We know people are busy, but the guideline is 30 minutes of activity a day and fitting that in can just mean going for a walk on your lunchbreak instead of sitting at your desk, or taking the stairs instead of the lift; these are things that you can build into your day.”

Mr Shilton says employers can play a role by providing facilities to encourage active transport to work or simply erecting a sign advocating use of the stairs.

“But there are some contradictions as well, because the same people who are too busy to do 30 minutes of exercise watch three and a half hours of television,” Mr Shilton says.

Watching TV instead of breaking a sweat isn’t something some of Western Australia’s fittest business leaders would be caught doing. The business leaders’ profiles show that anyone can find time for a workout no matter how hectic their schedule.

And their results attest to research claiming physical activity enhances work performance.

The state government has funnelled $8 million in funding over three years into Healthier Workplaces WA to provide grants to businesses wanting to improve the health and wellbeing of their workers.

Mr Shilton, who is also the director of cardiovascular health for the Health Foundation, acknowledged there were doubts about how its plans would be received by the private sector.

These fears were quickly allayed, however, with 200 applications for the first round of grants.

“Our early indication is that there’s enormous interest … we’ve got a long way to go in terms of supporting workplaces (but) they’re getting the message, and they’re ready now to hear about how to do it,” Mr Shilton says.

He says the majority of requests involve the promotion of healthier eating and increasing physical activity, with quitting smoking and managing alcohol intake comprising a minor proportion of enquiries.

Driving good workplace health is also increasingly about maintaining good mental health among employees, which brings the issue of employer-employee protocols to the fore.

This includes the tricky task of assessing mental health in the workplace with some tips for managing stress and building workers’ resilience.

Allowing employees to work from home has been introduced as a strategy for maintaining good mental health; buoyed by the fact it makes it easier to strike a good work-life balance.

However, teleworking may not always the best option as social isolation can reduce productivity and be detrimental to mental health.

It also brings with it a list of other risk factors, such as the ergonomics of the home office and how this may affect health.

Mental health and how to deal with stressful work environments has also become a dominant issue with the rise of WA’s fly-in, fly-out workforce, which is the subject of attempts to improve health through good nutrition.

But while there are challenges to improving workplace health, and strategies are only at formative stages in some areas, there is good news thanks to the rapid maturing of technology.

It seems that with almost every issue, investment in technology to improve and monitor health has provided an answer. 

There’s even work being done to monitor the effectiveness of brain function … however, advocating the use of a mobile application to monitor physical activity may be a better place to start.