February 2008 – The case for building healthy workplaces

You know that an idea is beginning to take off when entrepreneurs begin to sniff out possibilities for making money. It’s four years since I wandered in to the London offices of Vielife, a health and well being management company, and admired the bowl of fruit on the meeting room table.

At the time, the idea that concerns about employee health might go beyond the remit of the company medical department was a novel concept. Then last week I noticed a press release from a company called Fruit on Demand that was offering a London-based service delivering boxed fruit to offices.

“Smart employers all over London are now switching on to the benefits of buying fresh fruit for their staff, and seeing their generosity pay off in more ways than one,” said the release.

Yes, in four short years, employee health has entered the mainstream. Those office vending machines with their fizzy drinks, chocolate bars and crisps are already looking like relics of a misguided past. The new age thinking is all about juice and pips.

I’m sure that office cleaners just love this kind of thing as they endeavour to separate the paper waste from the apple cores and orange peel. But they must get used to it because health evangelism has now entered the boardroom in a campaign to include employee well being in annual company reports.

A group called Business Action on Health set up by Business In The Community and some of its member companies, has committed itself to raising the level of FTSE 100 companies measuring and reporting on employee health from the current rate of seven per cent to 75 per cent by 2011.

The group, chaired by Alex Gourlay, chief executive of Boots UK, the retail arm of Alliance Boots, is seeking to extend measuring and reporting within four areas:

· The promotion of employee health and absence measurement.
· Filtering health programmes in to the brand image for potential recruits and customers.
· Improving levels of employee engagement by encouraging healthier lifestyles.
· Reflecting a healthy working environment through reduced employee turnover.

“We want to make the business case that investing in those elements that drive your people engagement and well being is also going to help drive your business and the bottom line. If you don’t do this you’re missing a business opportunity,” says Mr Gourlay.

Standard Life, another member of the group, he says, believes it has improved productivity by 25 per cent in the past four years by promoting healthy working practices.

So what kind of things are going to make a difference? Mr Gourlay points to what he calls “simple pragmatic things” such as installing showers, clothing lockers, more spaces for bicycles, fruit in the office and cutting out stodgy food in staff canteens.

I admire the aims of the campaign which appears to have secured the support of the Department of Health but I don’t think that companies should lean too heavily on Government support. Instead they should be listening more to their employees because some of the best health initiatives are at the grassroots.

The extent to which companies think that health is a government issue was revealed in a recent Norwich Union Healthcare report. It found that while two thirds of the businesses it surveyed believed that employee health had a direct impact on productivity, a third of the companies wanted government incentives to invest more in staff well being. A quarter of the companies said they didn’t know where to get employee health information. That figure rose to something nearer a half of small businesses.

I’m suspicious of that last finding. I think the real issue is that many businesses don’t want to look for information. Neither do they want to invest much in well being if they cannot see direct bottom line results.

For myself the equation is pretty simple. If I don’t stay healthy, I can’t work and if I don’t work, I don’t earn. So it’s worth the investment in time and money I spend each week in the gym. But gym time can rarely be taken in work time for those who are employed. Most employees have to run in their lunch breaks or take their exercise as part of their commute.

Companies such as British Telecommunications have taken the health information route, creating advice packs and diet and exercise programmes for employees. But it is still the case in most companies that health is for the individual.

The move towards measuring and reporting is a significant development, not least, because some of these measures would have surfaced in the proposed Operating and Financial Reviews for public companies that were scrapped about two years ago before they could become part of the annual reporting cycle.

It’s a little bit ironic that various human resources measures, such as absence monitoring, engagement scores and employee turnover figures may resurface as a result of this new campaign.

Mervyn Davies, chairman of Standard Chartered Bank, said at the launch of an HR report in the City last week that he regarded employee well being to be one of the two most pressing issues in the workplace just now, the other being environmental concerns among employees.

The report, published by Oakleaf HR Search and Selection, was lamenting a dearth of good quality HR professionals in City institutions. Many of the HR managers questioned in the research blamed working conditions, saying that too many HR staff were leaving financial services in search of more balanced lifestyles.

Another issue is the lack of influence among HR people in the City. The best way to improve their influence, said Mr Davies, was to provide solid data. He said: “If you can’t convince the management that you have good data about employees you can’t get on their page.

“So as an industry HR is going to have to change fundamentally. It’s going to have to deal in data, otherwise its power is going to weaken significantly.”

The BITC campaign, therefore, should be viewed as an open door for those in HR who believe that linking management responses to sound employee measures is vital for increasing productivity.

A recent study* carried out by Adecco Institute, the research arm of the staffing company, looking at the potential for employers across Europe to confront demographic change, found that health management was “an area ripe for improvement.” While three quarters of European companies, it said, were offering medical check ups, only one in 10 companies were giving dietary advice or providing relaxation programmes.

“Long term health options such as sports facilities, back strain reduction and healthy catering remain the exception,” said the report. Before we get too excited we should remember that many of the large companies turning anew to employee health are the very same businesses that were closing down their sports and social clubs and selling off their sports fields a few years ago. Such is the fickleness of enlightenment.

*The report, Talent Crunch in City HR can be viewed at: www.oakleafpartnership.com

**http://www.adeccoinstitute.com/research2007.htm

See also: Workplace health