Local businesses get a taste of new Workplace Wellbeing services

On 19th July, we officially launched our Workplace Wellbeing services with a free Workplace Health Taster Day.

The hospitality suite at the Chamber of Commerce building became a “health centre” for the day, with free activities including blood pressure and BMI checks (with personalised advice based on the results), an introduction to Tai Chi, impairment goggles that highlight the effects of alcohol, and even a smoothie bike, creating pedal-powered healthy drinks!

Representatives from more than 60 local employers — including most of the organisations based at the Chamber building, Morrisons supermarket, Newman University and the Chamber itself — came along. They received a range of free support and advice from our experienced health professionals, with many choosing to pop back throughout the day to get involved in as many different activities as possible.

For these employers and employees, the Taster Day was a chance to find out how small health changes and preventative checks could have a big impact on working life.

Educating and supporting staff to actively manage their wellbeing has been shown to reduce absences and sickness levels, and to improve staff retention, motivation and productivity. Our Health and Wellbeing Facilitators gave BMI and blood pressure checks, which can be a really important indicator of wider issues or underlying health problems. Activities like the smoothie bike and the impairment goggles are fun, but they also provoke some really interesting conversations about health and the impact of good and bad habits, which our Behaviour Change Advisers were on hand to facilitate.

A training opportunity for us

As well as promoting our Workplace Wellbeing services, and testing our expanded offer, the Taster Day was really useful for our staff to gain more experience working with people from the corporate sector. Although our Health and Wellbeing Facilitators have worked with thousands of individuals in local communities over the years, supporting people in the workplace is slightly different, so we’re keen to make sure our delivery of these new packages runs as smoothly as possible.

For example, time is much more of a factor when people have been sent by an employer to get a health check within work time, or are visiting in their lunch hour – but our Facilitators quickly got used to the time restrictions at the event. Thanks to their years of previous experience, they were able to complete the mini consultations efficiently, and to spot where the focus of their advice for each person needed to be almost immediately, whilst maintaining their friendly, personal approach.

Because people are referred to our Workplace Wellbeing services by their employer rather than their doctor, these corporate health interventions also have a very slightly different focus. Although Gateway staff still take a “whole person” approach, and work one-to-one with the individual to get a picture of their health, conversations about work need to come to the forefront, and all the advice is given in the context of the workplace.

Ready to work with workplaces

It was wonderful to see how well our staff worked together to create a fun but informative event, and we’d like to thank everyone that came along and helped us create such a buzzing atmosphere. Visitors told us they were inspired by what they’d learned, and were going back to work feeling motivated, which was great to hear! But not only did we have lots of fun, we’ll be able to use what we learned on the day to make future Workplace Wellbeing services even more useful.

If you’d like to find out more about Gateway Workplace Wellbeing packages, or to run a similar event at your workplace, take a look at our Workplace Wellbeing pages or give Jemma or Keith a call on 0121 456 7820.