Workplace Health Connections

Dame Carol Black will make her recommendations about the health of working age people this month. She says the hardest part to write was the advice for employers. How do you tackle the terrible line managers and toxic corporate cultures behind the epidemic in stress and MSDs? A lot of people call these the ‘soft issues’, the fluffy, namby-pampy stuff for the cissys to mop up when the real men have done the hard, important stuff. When you’ve got a man’s job to do you bring in the employment lawyers, die-hard OH and safety traditionalists, doctors (and nurses) and HR. They do the regulations, exposure limits, key performance indicators. Well hard, isn’t it?

Is most of our bad behaviour simply a result of our diet? Apparently, in a US study they managed to reduce the reoffending rates of prisoners from 80% to 20% by giving them healthier food. Scientist Udo Erasmus, a name I am going to have to use if I ever decide to write a gothic vampire novel or something, concluded from his study that the answer is to prevent low blood glucose (hypoglycaemia). Does the Home Office know about this?

I came across the information this week when I was chairing an IRS conference on managing stress. Here is a round-up of the hot ideas that came up for anyone interested in managing their own stress or responsible for stress management in an organisation:

• Energy management. Yes, energy is the new resilience when it comes to wellbeing at work. Dr Adrian Chojnacki, VP of employee health management at pharmaceuticals giant GSK UK, advises that you work in sprints rather than flat out, and he says it's all right to take time out.
•  Both Chojnacki and Dr Wolfgang Seidl, executive director of Validium Group told delegates that we should develop 'health habits and rituals'. Go jogging every day when you get home from work and you will automatically crave a run round the park, as opposed to, say, a  take-away pizza and four cans of strong lager. And remember what I said about diet and bad behaviour.  
• Remember that stress is not the problem - it is the lack of recovery time that makes you sick. Unless you're stressed non-stop  for days on end it might even be doing you some good.  
•  Dr Ivan Robertson, managing director of Robertson Cooper, has the helpful idea of thinking in terms of 'challenge pressures' and 'hindrance pressures'. Hindrance pressures include things like role ambiguity, work overload and job insecurity and the challenge pressures include things like having achievable and specific goals and well managed change.

There - I bet you feel better already.