Birds eye: Be well aware

“The programme has helped us raise the awareness of employee wellbeing and made our staff think about their own lifestyles and health levels. Importantly it has also helped us to achieve a sickness absence rate of 2.40% for the second year running.”
A Reynolds, HR Manager

Birds EyeFor Occupational Health at our site at Lowestoft, the development of a healthy work force is important to us and we offer the opportunity to support changes in the lifestyles of our employees. Healthier people = higher performing business.

For the individual, they can improve their self-esteem, quality of life, and physical and mental health. For the company it can benefit from reduced levels of absenteeism, lower staff turnover, improved staff morale and increased productivity.

In April 2010 we actively started a wellbeing programme with the help of the local NHS health promoter by doing a site survey to ascertain people's perception of their current state of health and what they would like to try to do to improve it. This led to an action plan which was taken to our management team and union representatives. The plan was fine tuned ready for launch at the end of 2010.

Achievements

  • Absence has steadily declined from 5% around 4 years ago to 2.4% at present. The factory has also seen performance improve, with higher levels of productivity and efficiency, as well as employee morale, as measured by our annual employee survey.
  • The positive reaction to 'Be Well Aware' has demonstrated to the business the importance of health to our employees, with 40% taking part in at least one element. An important achievement was that out of 216 blood pressure checks 10 individuals were referred to their GP for further help.
  • All grades of employees have taken part which benefits our on site atmosphere and morale.

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