WorkHealth,

Fitness and Wellbeing Management System

Welcome to WorkHealth, Fitness and Wellbeing

Miller Health is pleased to forward a proposal aimed at steering the attention of your organisation toward the health side of the Occupational Health and Safety equation.

HEALTH, FITNESS AND WELLBEING

The reason for adding 'fitness' to 'health' is that in a sedentary culture it is a very big ask expecting to stay healthy without keeping oneself fit. The great advances in community health made in the first 80 years of the 20th Century are being eroded dramatically by a sedentary lifestyle.

The reason for adding the word 'wellbeing' is to further broaden the definition of 'health' to give it a psychological perspective.

DECLINING HEALTH STATUS

It is a fact that the health status of the community is declining - the increase in medical expenditure confirms this. It's obvious; if people were becoming healthier, medical bills would be coming down.

Workplaces are being effected by this trend. At the same time as workplaces have become safer, they've also become unhealthier. Poor health, not poor safety is now is now the most significant driver of OH&S costs in most organisations.

DYSFUNCTION

When we talk about 'poor health', it becomes easier to grasp the concept when we define it as 'body system dysfunction'. Most of the diseases that plagued the country 100 years ago have disappeared. The current illhealth epidemic relates to life-style induced dysfunctions. It's a private health issue, not a public health issue.

These dysfunctions are driven principally by

The good news about this is that if personal lifestyle choice is the major cause of the problem, then personal lifestyle choice can be a major influence in the solution.

There are three principal categories of dysfunction,

▪ metabolic

▪ musculo-skeletal

▪ psychological.

These dysfunctions are recognised by their symptoms

HEALTH AND THE WORKPLACE

So why should organisations take an interested in the personal health of their staff?

THE INVESTMENT VERSUS THE COST

Within the community generally there is confusion between the meaning of the word 'health' and the word 'medical'. The workers' compensation and medical industries treat the two as though they were synonymous. But they're not.

The focus of 'health' is people being healthy - and it's a big ask expecting to be healthy without being fit. It's about doing something yourself to stimulate recuperative power, restoring poor health to good health by doing the things fit and healthy people do to keep themselves fit and healthy. It's a very big ask expecting to get better by having someone do something to you!

Regrettably the focus of medicine in this country has become the masking of symptoms, of doing things to people, rather than people doing things to themselves. It leads to expensive and drawn out treatments. No one ever became stronger or more flexible in a surgery or pharmacy, or on a massage table!

Money spent on medical treatment is a cost. Money spent on health is an investment.

By making a modest investment in health, fitness and wellbeing, you can generate savings on absenteeism, presenteeism, workers' compensation and staff turnover.

In the long run it will save your organisation huge amounts of money on their workers' compensation premiums.

Developing a sharper focus on health, fitness and wellbeing stands to turn current OH&S thinking on it head. Currently every twinge, every palpitation, every disappointment is deemed to be work-related.

What a good OHFW program does is reduce the dysfunctions, and better manage the risk of them becoming attributable to the workplace - no smoke, no mirrors, just plain common-sense; healthy people - healthy workplace.

Organisations  can make a choice - either to make a modest investment in encouraging people to keep themselves fit and healthy or face the high costs associated with presenteeism, absenteeism, workers' compensation and staff turnover.

A WORD ABOUT WORKER'S COMPENSATION INSURANCE

Until there is

a.  a personal imperative for people to keep themselves fit and healthy, and

b.  an organisational imperative to keep people fit and healthy

workers' compensation schemes will continue to be the bottomless pits, down which ever increasing amounts of money are poured.

PUTTING THE HEALTH INTO OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY

What we are suggesting is that your organisation establish a new WorkHealth Fitness and Wellbeing division, designed to put the Health into Occupational Health and Safety.

I believe that by establishing a new WorkHealth, Fitness and Wellbeing division you will set the standards for other organisations to match, follow and live up to, providing the proof that 'health pays'.

IN A NUTSHELL

In the pages that follow you'll be able to view an outline of what organisations like yours can do to establish the concept of within your organisation.

Policy

It includes establishing policy.

Programs

It means running health programs for all staff. If staff are not obligated to take part it makes a mockery of the organisation's commitment; plus those most in need - the workaholics, the self important and the unhealthy, are not likely to attend. The impact and the effect is marginalised. A serious occupational health, fitness and wellbeing program elevates OHFW to the status of technical, management and career development within an organisation. It gives life, energy and vitality to the organisation.

Assessments

It means making assessments to provide benchmarks in OHFW - for individual staff members and the organisation. Without measurement, neither the individual nor the organisation knows whether the objectives of the program are being achieved.

We've made assessments on thousands of people and we have a fair idea of the standards that can be met by normal, healthy people. However, any workplace can set standards to suit themselves, gradually increasing them as staff get fitter and healthier.

Your organisation can play a big part in setting best practice standards for OHFW in your industry.

Certainly any standards achieved by any workgroup can be measured and compared with those achieved by other workgroups. This in itself will create a healthy interest in health development within organisations.

Audits

Assessments lead on to audits. You can benchmark your organisation section by section. You can provide your managers with key performance indicators to work toward.

Prehab and rehab

It means running prehab programs for people found to be at risk of the various dysfunctions, assisting people who are at risk of dysfunction to become fitter and healthier.

It means beefing up and taking charge of rehab programs so the recovery time is speeded up dramatically.

Key performance indicators

It means creating key performance indicators against which manager's performance can be gauged. No organisation can tolerate high levels of absenteeism and workers compensation for long. These matters have to be managed at the lowest levels.

This means managers will need some training so they can comfortably accept this role.

Awards and rewards

It means providing rewards for people who are in good shape and those on the way to better shape.

Green

I've chosen the colour green to represent the vitality, energy and creativity behind the program.

According to Edward DeBono, the Green Hat symbolizes adapting and changing to make more successful; synthesizing and inventing. (Based on the long history of occupational health and safety, a new emphasis on health will certainly require a lot of synthesizing and inventing.)

AT THE CROSSROADS

We've reached a crossroad.

We've got an aging workforce. You don't want good staff to retire early because they're in poor shape, tired and worn out. There is not stopping the great majority of people from being in good shape until they're at least 65.

Help them stay in good shape and they'll stick with you.

Then there are a lot of selection procedures that are not tight enough. I know of one organisation that employed a bloke weighing 140Kg and 8 weeks later he slapped a claim form on the OH&S manager's table for DVT. The insurance company was happy to oblige - not their money!

If you can fog up the mirror you'll pass most medical exams.

Then there's turnover. In this labor market it's dog eat dog. If you don't have some good employee value propositions, sooner or later good people are going to accept a better offer.

One of the best things you can do for your staff is encourage them to keep themselves fit and healthy to the best of their ability. The increased energy and vitality will be infectious. It will even rub off onto your customers.

What can we do?

We run programs, - health, fitness, diet, smoking cessation, stress management and career satisfaction.

We conduct assessments which provide the data to create Health Climate Surveys and Risk Factor Audits.

We make individual and organisational recommendations about how to improve employee health, fitness and wellbeing.

We provide individual, lifestyle counseling.

We provide advice on the development of:

- policy

- strategy

- prehab and rehab classes

- fitness centre establishment.

And here's what it's all about,

HEALTHY PEOPLE - HEALTHY ORGANISATION

Click on the key to enter the WorkHealth, Fitness and Wellbeing website.

John Miller

Managing Director

Miller Health Pty Ltd