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Case Study: Mars

Mars in the UK has around 4,000 employees across its different businesses and sites. At Mars, there is a belief that good health is good business and the active employee wellness programme is a fundamental element of this

For many years, Mars has had a workplace health scheme in place. After successful involvement in the National Well@Work project in 2006-7, Mars further developed this using many of the learnings from the pilot, in its in-house Winning with Wellness Programme.

The programme aims to provide all employees with opportunities to be informed about their health and help them make choices about how to lead healthier lifestyles. In addition, there are numerous activities on offer to help employees translate this into their day-to-day lives.

Winning with Wellness is managed by the occupational health team across the business and offers different benefits across different sites. In recent years, focus has been on a range of areas including diet and nutrition, physical activity, stress management and smoking cessation, which continues to evolve in line with the needs of Mars employees.

Each site holds at least one wellness week per year, which is fundamental to communicating the benefits of the programme. These combine a range of activities and wellness offerings over the week, along with prizes and giveaways and a range of initiatives such as BMI measurement, wellness kiosks, and cholesterol, blood pressure and glucose checks.

Additional ongoing benefits across the year include corporate rates for gym membership with some sites housing an on-site gym; stress management including stress awareness days, self-help leaflets and subsidised massage; smoking cessation activities including one-to-one support; organised events such as netball and rounders tournaments, five-a-side football, and regular exercise classes including boxercise, pilates, salsa dancing, Tai Chi and circuit training, along with social events.

Mars in the UK was proud to win bronze in the 2009 FDF Community Partnership Awards Workplace category.

At the heart of Mars' business is a set of principles that define the culture. Two of these principles are mutuality and responsibility, and Mars believes that the Winning With Wellness project is synonymous with these. Mars is committed to making its company a great place to work.

More Information

FDF has published a booklet called Workplace Wellbeing: The Food Industry in Action (pdf, 984kb) which features many workplace wellbeing schemes .

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Last reviewed: 06 May 2010