How Healthy is your Workplace?
Health and mental health have been a huge focus in the WHS space the last year or two, and the regulators have been very helpful providing a great deal of information and free tools to help us deal with this.
In the link provided is an eye opening table of data (from Work Health and Safety Queensland), that describes the main 'manageable' risk factors that contribute to poor health by industry. The data highlights groups that were significantly worse than the general population and examines:
Body Mass Index (ratio of weight and height)
Waist Circumference (indicator of visceral fat and higher risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes)
Poor eating habits
Unhealthy drinking habits.
Have a look at your industry category, and see if the data rings true for you personally or the people around you. Post and share with your work colleagues. It might be time to start the discussion in your workplace, about how you can all get healthier and happier, and how work can help you do it. Maybe bring it up with your safety committee, supervisor or General Manager to see what they're doing about 'health' at work.
As a WHS Practitioner, I've seen first hand how an 'unhealthy' worker can make for some pretty 'unhealthy' statistics... think about how a minor incident or injury can be exacerbated if the person already has significant health issues. A minor slip is more likely to become a slip disc or serious soft tissue injury if a person is morbidly obese. A minor injury is more likely to become a systemic infection if a person suffers from Type 2 Diabetes. The recovery from a musculoskeletal injury in an already inactive person is likely to take much longer. The compounding issues of an 'unhealthy' workforce are a reality.
Consider the more positive aspects of improving the health in your workforce. By showing your workforce that you CARE about their well-being in and out of work, isn't it just possible that workers may feel CARED ABOUT, and improve their participation, collaboration and hopefully productivity. Taking action doesn't even need to take a lot of money. To develop a health and wellbeing program at work, Work health and Safety Queensland also have lots of FREE tools to help you identify health issues and plan activities to improve health at work. And of course (here comes the plug), our highly skilled staff at Actum can help your workplace assess and plan for a healthier workplace, if you find the FREE stuff a bit tricky, or you're just time poor. How Healthy is your Industry? Contact Actum
http://www.healthyworkers.gov.au/…/publish…/Content/industry
#Mentalhealth #Managemenrt #Health #WorkplaceHealthandsafetyQueensland