Actually, to be precise, I drank a beetroot, a carrot, a celery stick, some cucumber and a small piece of ginger; find out why Dudley Lusted, head of corporate healthcare development at AXA PPP healthcare, a self-confessed ‘fat man’ has, after sixty years finally recognised the link between health and productivity.
It all went through the juicer and out it came, delicious albeit strangely coloured. Natural colours do look odd if you’re used to artificial colouring!
If, six weeks ago, someone told me that I’d start my day with a veggie juice, I would have laughed at them. Yet, there I was, knocking sixty years of age, over eighteen stone, drinking the best part of a bottle of wine in a night, averaging ten espressos a day and proud of the fact that I drove everywhere!
As far as I was concerned it didn’t matter – I love my job, am never off sick and was, as far as I know, fully productive – your classic ‘happy fat man’. In truth, I was actually the ultimate health warning to all my colleagues
So why the change? Well, bizarrely, it was nothing to do with my size (I have long been used to being overweight). The change came following my completion of our online risk assessment and health education tool. The results made me accept (at last) that, in addition to my physical deterioration, I could well be harming my brain. It also struck me that whilst I was obviously unfit others around me who were physically fit were not as well as they might be – some wake up at night and struggle to get back to sleep, others smoke, some drink way past reasonable levels and many have an unbalanced diet.
A quick bit of in-house research soon revealed that 98% of my management colleagues (out of a sample of more than 100) admitted to more than one ‘bad’ lifestyle behaviour or that they ‘could be fitter’. The good news is that well over 90% want to change for the better. I have no doubt that my colleagues and I are a microcosm of the UK’s hard working, hard living knowledge workers – just like you and your colleagues.
I thought I was fully productive but now I know that subtle changes are occurring – for the better. For instance I thought I always woke up feeling fine but now I know I was feeling jaded. Better yet, now I really do feel fine. And, whilst I cannot say my performance has improved by an exact percentage, it has definitely improved.
Most people only need to make minor, iterative changes to live healthier better balanced lives. And, importantly, all that many people need to achieve this is some decent support and advice. Better still, employers can achieve improvements within a budget that for most is little more than a rounding of an expense item on the balance sheet.
The links between health and wellbeing benefits and productivity are becoming better established, both in respect of attendance and performance. And, to help make the business case for investment in such benefits, Dr Steve Deacon (head of health at Royal Mail and one of Britain’s leading Occupational Health physicians) has penned a manager’s guide to some of the key studies underpinning this growing field. Last month, for example, the Mental Health Foundation published findings that point to a link between a healthy lifestyle and a healthy brain (and, arguably, a capability for more effective performance):
- People who report some level of mental health problem eat fewer healthy foods (fresh fruit and vegetables, organic foods and meals made from scratch) and more unhealthy foods (chips and crisps, chocolate, ready meals and takeaways).
- Nearly two-thirds of people who do not report daily mental health problems eat fresh fruit or fruit juice every day, compared with less than half of those who do report daily mental health problems (this pattern is similar for fresh vegetables and salad).
Many of you reading this will have spent years chasing down sickness absence rates from, say, 5% to 3%, and feel really good about it. Yet how many of us have invested time, money or effort in trying to encourage improvements in lifestyle? Perhaps we hadn’t seen the need. Or maybe we didn’t have the inclination. Perhaps we lacked the knowledge about what to do, or, most likely, we lacked the tools.
The good news is that with the internet have come cost-effective tools that enable employees to understand their health risks, see where they can improve and monitor progress over time. Employers can see how fit – and how stressed – their organisations are. They can create benchmarks, introduce further lifestyle improvement initiatives and track their impact over time.
In contrast to many workplace healthcare initiatives, the new tools are taking the guesswork out of whether improved wellbeing is improving performance. They can also take the guesswork out of whether the programme is cost-effective. For example, our own online health assessment service backed up by worksite promotions and expert helplines (staffed by nurses, pharmacists, psychologists and counsellors) can be delivered for around 20p per person per working day – significantly less than the cost of providing free coffee or heavier weight health benefits such as off-site screens or income protection and private medical cover.
The potential opportunity gain from improved employee wellbeing makes a compelling case for serious consideration. A five per cent productivity gain across the board, for example, is surely a bigger prize than a single percentage point fall in sickness absence. Moreover, get wellbeing right and the odds are falling absence levels will follow.
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