Television company BSkyB is encouraging staff to take up trampolining and midnight yoga as part of a UK-wide wellbeing programme.
‘Feel Karma 2005’ aims to encourage BSkyB’s 11,000 staff to “bounce stress away” by putting trampolines in open meeting areas and offering midnight yoga and tai chi sessions for late-night shift workers.
Marquees have been put up in car parks at all BSkyB office locations, offering a range of therapies including Indian head massages and cooking demonstrations from professional chefs. Employees are also being given free pedometers and fruit smoothies.
For the 1,000 installation engineers working remotely, BSkyB is offering gym membership discounts and health-tracking charts.
Beryl Cook, Sky’s director for people and organisational development, said: “All too often, health campaigns in the workplace are well-meaning but po-faced. We’d like everyone to have a bit of fun in the process.”
The government has been encouraging employers to play a bigger role in improving the health of employees.
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Launching the ‘Health, Work and Wellbeing – Caring for our future’ strategy last month, Lord Hunt, minister for health and safety, said the workplace could be a positive environment to encourage people to look after their own health.
Research shows that workplace wellbeing schemes can produce a return on investment of nearly 400%, by improving productivity and reducing sickness absence.
