The secret to making your wellness scheme work

The desire to set up a health and wellness programme that will really help your employees and genuinely get your absenteeism figures down is a shared dream for many companies. Especially at a time like this when there is no room or time for tolerating staff who can't give 100%.

But some companies actually knuckle down and do it and reap the HUGE benefits. There's a great case study released this month about First ScotRail who did just that. It'll inspire you I'm sure to get out of the 'thinking about it stage' into the 'getting on and doing it stage' I'm sure.

When you have a staff base who come to you as school leavers and stay with you for their whole working lives, you get to know them and what makes them tick. More importantly, you get to understand what causes them to be absent from work and why and you know when it's time to tackle this.

This is exactly what happened to the Nicola Macpherson, occupational health advisor at First ScotRail.

Her approach was a smart one - tackle each obstacle by taking on the biggest problem first and working from there. She knew her staff were mostly shift workers so there was a work-life balance issue to be addressed and she knew that absenteeism was mostly caused by musculo skeletal problems and mental health problems and so again, she addressed these big issues above all else.

Read her brief case study - it really does make you want to get stuck into your own programme today and get the problems ironed out.

The best tip to be learned from Nicola Macpherson I think is that by tackling the biggest problem first, the rest will follow. Don't put off taking on the elephant in the room.

We help companies to solve their problems by supplying the expertise they need to address the health and wellness of their workforce. Why not contact us and tell us what your biggest issues are and we can give you free and friendly advice.