Are you concerned about absenteeism and the general health of your workforce? A healthy workforce is vital to the success of any business and so prioritising the health and wellbeing of staff should be high up on every company’s agenda. Northern Clinics is delighted to be offering on-site heart health checks to businesses across Northern Ireland with the aim of helping to keep our local workforce fit and healthy.
1 in 4 adults have high blood pressure- how many of your staff are at risk?
The British Heart Foundation estimates that up to 4 million adults aged under 65 in the UK have undiagnosed high blood pressure. If left untreated, high blood pressure can lead to heart attacks, strokes, kidney problems, sight loss and vascular dementia. In Northern Ireland, cardiovascular disease is responsible for 25% of all deaths. Identifying those with high blood pressure or raised cholesterol is one of the biggest things we can do to help reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease. At Northern Clinics we provide a range of services for corporate partners including testing of these important health measures.
Our standard “Corporate healthy hearts package” includes:
- Convenient on-site clinic
- Blood pressure measurement
- Full cholesterol profile (with results within 6 minutes)
- Cardiovascular risk score
- Body Mass Index (BMI)
- Professional advice and guidance
- Written personalised health reports
We can also provide a range of other services including on-site diabetes screening, flu and travel vaccinations or more comprehensive blood testing. Once we have provided all of your team members with their personalised health reports, we can collate this data and produce a company-level anonymised health report. This type of data will provide you with an overall picture of your company’s heart health which you can use to help make decisions about any future occupational health strategies.
Make heart health a key part of your company’s culture today
Here are some ideas you might want to consider to improve the heart health of your workforce:
- Healthy lunch options: Encourage employees to get a decent healthy lunch break. You could facilitate this by having healthier options available on-site or even consider organising events like a “Healthy cook off” or “Free fruit Fridays”.
- Staff perks: Consider offering memberships or discounts for local gyms. You could also arrange a “Get moving challenge” like the “10,000 steps a day challenge” with prizes to help motivate your staff to move more.
- Prevention: Focus on prevention and offer free annual heart health checks to all staff to help identify problem areas like high blood pressure or raised cholesterol early on. Get in touch with Northern Clinics today to book your on-site staff health assessments.
- Facilitate exercise: Research has shown that daily exercise can improve decision-making and focus. Encourage staff to cycle or walk to work and offer schemes to support this. You could promote exercise at lunch times by organising free yoga sessions or group walks (but don’t forget to ensure staff have access to on-site shower facilities!).
- Offer flexible working: Consider the benefits to staff health and wellbeing by allowing flexible start and finish times or longer lunch breaks. Encourage them to use this flexibility to find the time out of their busy schedules to exercise.
- Think outside of the box: Walking meetings, standing desks, on-site gyms and office or conference bikes are just some of the innovative ways that other companies are getting their staff up and moving. Get creative and think about initiatives that could work well in your business to help your employees spend less time sitting.
Start with making some small changes and together these can go a long way towards improving the physical and mental wellbeing of your team. As research shows, healthy workers need less time off work and are more productive, which ultimately brings about positive benefits for your company. According to the British Heart foundation, for every £1 spent on workplace health initiatives, the potential economic return on investment is approximately £4.12.
A healthy workforce is a happier and more productive one
We offer bespoke packages tailored to your company’s requirements and would be delighted to discuss your needs and find out what we can do to help. Get in touch today to partner with Northern Clinics and make the heart health of your workforce a key priority for 2024.
This blog was written by Dr Deborah Patton, MPSNI, MPharm, PhD (Community Pharmacist at Northern Pharmacies).
References:
https://nichs.org.uk/assets/resources/NICHS-Cardiac-Manifesto-v9.pdf
