Sport Northland's Active Workplace programme encourages workplace's to support their staff in creating a healthier environment. The programme focuses on working alongside workplaces to support and encourage a long term commitment to physical activity and wellness via various initiatives, connecting services, events and anything that matters to their staff.

Sport Northlands Active Workplace Coordinator, Sharon Adams recently attended the Corporate Health and Wellbeing Summit in Auckland where key note speakers came together to empower and inspire those associated.

The Corporate Health and Wellness Auckland summit certainly did just that with speakers such as phycologist and TV star Nigel Latta, Dr Aaron Jarman from the SAHMRI wellbeing and resilience centre, Chief Executive of the New Zealand Mental Health association – Shaun Robinson, Phycologists Dr Jenny Brokis Kash Thomson, and Sharron Botica from Sovereign New Zealand.

Well known television star Nigel Latta is renowned for asking those direct questions through his show on “The Hard Stuff” which investigates such topics as talking about suicide in a safe way, to more social issues we face today.  His talk at the summit walked participants down the road of Change Management relative to wellness or as Nigel puts it just “management”. Everything is always changing, pointing out facts we can resonate with like the 1970’s had themes such as “Disco music” the 1980’s theme of “3D movies”.  However coming into 2000, the decades have been lost as change is occurring so fast with technology and development.

Key points in workplace wellness as we navigate through these changes came back to keeping it simple for individuals with the three keys including 

• Autonomy - the ability for staff to make choices/create their own environment to flourish
• Competency - staff need a sense of  growth/development, and
• Connectedness - fundamentally we want to connect and be cared for

In a nutshell Nigel’s message was workplace wellness builds a culture by talking to staff, foster’s growth in individuals and the workplace through “effort” of employee not “star” employees.

Another key note speaker Dr Aaron Jarmin looked at optimal human functioning in wellbeing, with posing the question, what is a good life? The areas of workplace wellness include essential ingredients to your wellness programme from management and leadership to “Beautiful Questions” what’s working and why? What has failed and why? And how are you measuring your wellness programme?. 

“A lot of companies have wellness programmes however a lot of the time, it is not measured and can be un formalised”. Dr Aaron goes onto explain the importance of measuring workplace wellness programmes as the automotive company Futuris in Australia highlighted with the following results after a five year plan return on investing (ROI) in workplace wellness:

• 38% reduction in absenteeism
• 21% reduction in lost time due to injuries
• 25% reduction in performance management case

Other easy measures that were highlighted as being just as important to be measured were in areas of staff happiness, employee satisfaction and self - rated performance levels.

Dr Jenny Brokis went on a journey show casing cognitive health in times of high ‘stress’ being a challenge.  Key points identified to keep things simple – our brains weren’t designed to multi task coming into the 2000’s, keep a focus on monotasking  and focusing on the ‘present’ as ever ending change whirls around us.  She emphasised to take time to re-set, re-imagine and re-learn mind sets is just as important as technology.  As Jenny explains try to avoid a busy brain as this leads to black and white thinking leaving little room for creativity. The brain is designed to take in short chunks of information therefore working longer or without breaks loses valuable brain productivity.

Jenny also goes on to highlight “better cognitive health starts with lifestyle choice that helps us think well, learn effectively, and remember what matters, the importance of good nutrition, physical activity, sleep and looking after our mind for longer lasting mental energy in the workplace/home.”

This train of thought was also backed up by the Chief Executive of Mental Health Shaun Robinson as he delved deeper into mental health in the workplace as staff scales can rank from languishing showing sluggish, pessimistic behaviour to flourishing showing states of positivity, resilient and optimism.

Recommendations for workplaces to encourage ‘flourishing’ in the workplace and with staff begins with positive champions who talk about how they are feeling, promoting that it is “ok” to talk about how you feel, positive culture with reviewing systems regularly and a support system for all staff.

Questions were asked around mental health with statistics showing individuals mental health is attributed to 50% biology, 40% choice, actions and behaviours, and 10% circumstance.

This really highlights the fact of how very important it is to have a good workplace wellness programme supporting staff with good workplace culture.

Workplace wellness is forever evolving and as we spend more of our waking hours in the workplace, workplace wellness programmes are now internationally recognised to be an important component for workplaces to flourish. 

If you need assistance with workplace wellness don’t hesitate to give the team at Sport Northland a call or email the Active Workplace Programme via sharona@sportnorth.co.nz