A Simple Way to Commit to Great Wellness Results in 2014

In a recent Press Release from Employee Benefits Magazine you can read how we're helping Roffey Park Institute keep their staff healthy and engaged.

Remember, if you want to help your staff stay on track with their wellness objectives for 2014, some simple motivation and accountability can go a long way.  Here's how it can work:

EXCLUSIVE: Roffey Park Institute has launched a series of half-day wellbeing workshops for its employees.

The first three events, which were rolled out in September and October, were attended by around 60 of the organisation’s 80 staff.

Roffey Park Institute creates programmes on leadership, organisational development, HR and coaching, so it is keen to ensure its employees are also developed, engaged and happy.

Caroline Disano, head of programme delivery and HR projects at Roffey Park Institute, said: “We’re quite aware that employees are going to be asked to do more with less, and will be busy, so we wanted to be very mindful of the health and wellbeing angle.”

The organisation partnered corporate wellness organisation The Tonic to introduce the workshops. The Tonic’s owner, Jeff Archer, encouraged all attendees to choose three wellbeing commitments.

Disano added: “Mine, for instance, were to make sure I got into the gym for a half-hour session once a week, to try to drink more water and to try to spend a bit more me time.”

Roffey Park Institute offers a range of health and wellbeing initiatives to employees, including flexible-working arrangements, eye tests, enhanced paid annual leave above the statutory minimum, free fruit, herbal teas and refreshments, healthy options in itson-site restaurant, use of its on-site gym, sauna and steam room, use of the grounds and access to the forest for exercise and recreation.

“We have a super site here,” said Disano. “We’ve got 65 bedrooms onsite, a pool and a gym, and beautiful grounds. We do an awful lot around health and wellbeing. We wanted to tie [the workshops] in to complement our existing initiatives that we do around health and wellbeing.”

The organisation communicates its health and wellbeing strategy using a noticeboard, quarterly staff updates and management meetings.

Roffey Park Institute intends to follow its 2013 workshops with an event in the first part of 2014. Disano added: “It will cover content again, but also revisit people’s commitment and giving them the space to have a discussion in their break-up groups about how successful they have been and what hurdles they have encountered.

“People walk around the building asking colleagues if they’ve done their commitments this week. It’s created quite a lot of energy with members of staff. We want to keep that momentum going.” 

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Don't Hate the Office, Work It!

There's so much more to be gained from going to the office everyday (salary aside). You can learn so much - and get paid for it. Confused? Okay, let me explain. When it comes to learning new skills at work, what do you think employees value the most? Mastering power point presentations or perhaps Leadership training? Well, a report published last week in the Human Resources Magazine listed the things at work that employees learned which they found most valuable. The list included:

• Communication Skills
• Interpersonal Skills
• Team Working
• IT Skills


It’s clear from the above list that what people most value from their time at work is their ability to develop life skills. There’s not much emphasis on learning specific tasks, systems and procedures, but there is great importance attached to learning skills that make you better able to work with or manage the people responsible for the tasks, systems and procedures.

This comes as no surprise to me.

It is consistent with the business people that we work with on our programmes. By teaching people how to look after their health and wellbeing, we provide them with all the resources they require to maximise their energy, increase their mental capacity and improve their focus and efficiency. These skills are invaluable in the workplace but also enable people to operate more effectively in every area of their lives. Learning these skills within the working environment means staff view their employer positively. Sometimes, people struggle to see how looking after staff wellness can transform the performance they get. To answer that, here’s a quick run down of the top three tips for keeping staff engaged and fully motivated.

1.Every day is learning at work day
Everyone needs to work but fewer and fewer people these days are motivated by just earning a living. They want to learn some thing new every day and always feel as though they are growing and developing. If you can ensure that your employees go home to their families feeling positive and saying, ‘guess what I learned today at work’, you’ll have a much more lively workplace than if employees simply report that work was 'Oh, you know, same old same old' or, worse than that, 'I don't want to talk about it.'

2. Keep it simple
Communication skills, interpersonal skills and team working are all things that you might think would come most naturally to anyone in the workplace but, as our list suggests they are areas that people most appreciate having the opportunity to work on.

The same goes for eating well, taking exercise and managing stress. You might think that handling these areas is easy or that they’ll take care of themselves but they are often the areas that are most overlooked. Offering staff simple, practical and consistent information and advice ensures they can make easy progress in these areas. It also sends a very strong message that being at work doesn’t mean putting the rest of your life on hold, rather you can learn new information at work that has positive implications for the rest of your life. Not so much work – life balance, more work as part of life balance.

3. Make it relevant
When it comes to health and wellbeing, the message you deliver to staff is all important. If staff think that all you’re interested in is keeping them healthy so you can drive them harder then you’ll have trouble motivating them towards even the most exciting initiatives.

If they understand that what you’re offering them is designed to help energize them and upgrade how they feel while they’re at work while also injecting them with energy and enthusiasm for what ever they choose to do outside of work, they’ll be much more likely to view your initiatives favourably.

Show this post to your boss, it may just get them thinking.
And if you are the Boss, what are you waiting for?

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