Health & wellbeing

A healthy, energising workplace is good for our employees because it offers a more enjoyable work/life experience and it is good for our business because it supports increased engagement and productivity alongside reduced health-related costs. We aim to provide our people with the right tools, education and training to help them understand and manage their individual health and wellbeing challenges.

Our Health and Wellbeing Strategy provides the framework for promoting health and wellbeing, and managing and measuring related activities consistently across the company. It is focused not only on the prevention of work-related ill health but also on the pro-active, sustainable and targeted improvement of engagement and energy levels throughout the organisation.

The Strategy concentrates on three key areas:

Personal Energy Management

Modules are available to help leaders and employees become more productive and effective under pressure by managing their energy more effectively and learning how best to channel it.

Health screening

Health screening is currently available for employees at over 80% of our sites / marketing companies and we are working to make it available to all our employees, together with follow up options to support any necessary health and lifestyle changes. Clinical evidence-based guidance on the types of health screening to be promoted has been developed.

Essential Health Activities

Our Essential Health Activities framework consists of six global programmes and services that are being promoted and tailored to suit local cultures and risk profiles. These are Physical Fitness, Healthy Business Travel, Workplace Pressure Management, Tobacco Use Cessation, Healthy Eating and General Health Promotion. Standards and guidelines support the implementation of programmes in these six areas and we have a target that requires ≥80% of sites / marketing companies to have all six in place by 2015.

Managing workplace pressure is an area of particular focus. We want to provide a safe and healthy working environment in which everyone can perform to their full potential and we know that managing pressure and promoting wellbeing is a major element of this. People are less likely to experience work-related stress when the demands and pressures of work are matched to their knowledge and abilities; when supervisors and colleagues provide support, and when people can participate in decisions that concern their jobs. We are working to reduce workplace pressure by enhancing those aspects of the work environment that are proven to have a positive impact on individuals, increasing individual resilience and coping skills through appropriate training, and supporting employees with Human Resources policies and procedures alongside access to occupational health professionals and counselling / psychotherapy support.