Managing Physical Well-being
Managing Physical Well-being
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Managing physical well-being in your departments can be difficult, particularly as many physical ailments do not fall within your responsibility and are often managed by the individual and their medical professional such as diabetes. However, that doesn't mean you can't raise awareness and promote good physical well-being!
Sick reports have highlighted absences around minor illness such as coughs and colds, back pain, fatigue, or operations and fractures. Although you cannot influence members of staff taking time off for operations or fractures, promotion of good physical well-being from healthy eating to exercising well could reduce proneness to minor illnesses and may improve side effects of fatigue.
Tips to promote physical well-being!
Tips to promote physical well-being!
It can be difficult to incorporate exercise into your work, especially if you have a desk job, however, that doesn't mean you can't promote little tricks to encourage staff to incorporate exercise into work without gyms or exercise equipment such as:
- Taking the stairs
- Desk aerobics
- Taking a quick pace during a computer break
- Walking to work
- Incorporate stand-up or walking meetings into your team meetings
- Lunch time walks
These activities can be done individual or can be incorporated into team meetings or sessions. By creating a positive example, your team may follow!
Promoting a well-being culture within the team could also encourage individuals who may have thought about incorporating more exercise into their lifestyle to feel more motivated.
Physical well-being isn't just exercise
Physical well-being isn't just exercise
You can also promote healthy eating using little gimmicks to encourage staff to engage in a healthier diet like:
- Bringing healthy snacks into the office- instead of bringing in chocolates or sweets for your team, try more nutritional snacks such as nuts or fruit
- Holding a 5 -a-day competition, rewarding staff who for a week continually use the stairs, walk to work everyday or eat their 5-a -day to encourage healthier habits.
- Trying Couch to 5K as a team and motivate each other
- Promoting healthy eating campaigns such as Change4Life
- Trying a team sober week or team Dry January
- Encouraging your team to eat away from their desk or stretch their legs during lunch breaks
Although you cannot force your team to participate in healthy campaigns, promotion and encouragement with team support may inspire staff to consider looking at healthy alternatives knowing they are not embarking on that journey alone!
Ensuring your staff have done all their training or seeking OH advice can also assist in preventing or easing physical ailments.
Taking regular breaks and stretching can assist with back pains alongside guidance found in DSE training available to current and new employees. This can help them to adjust their chairs and work space to ensure they are looking after their health and well-being including back pain or body aches.
The College's Occupational Health nurse can assist in advising on phased-returns and reasonable adjustments as well as offering further information on conditions you may be unfamiliar with in order to help your staff get back into work and feel supported whilst in work.
Fatigue can also be common in employees and sleep debt can be easily accumulated due to work, medical or personal reasons causing a late or disturbed nights sleep. In some cases, diet and exercise can prove beneficial and ease side effects of fatigue alongside improving an individuals well being in general. However, for more severe or individual cases of fatigue, discussions with OH and your HR Business Partner can help you make the right approach.
Promoting and allowing staff short breaks to participate in "Check your Numbers" days can assist in improving well-being. You or a member of your team may learn something new or feel a change in their lifestyles due as a result of their numbers. By allowing teams to participate, greater awareness of physical well-being is spread whilst emphasizing it's importance!
Golden Rule:
You can take a horse to water but you can't make it drink!
Just remember, you cannot judge staff for their well-being choices or enforce lifestyle changes onto your team. Supporting your team can allow staff to feel motivated or encouraged to make these changes independently. It is important to promote well-being to further illustrate it's importance. Many people believe they do not have time to take care of their physical well-being but by allowing staff time to incorporate a few well-being tricks or expressing the importance of maintaining well-being can go a long way.
Keep an eye on the "A Better You" hub for advice, tricks and individual ideas to improve your well-being physically, mentally and financially!
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