Supporting cardiovascular health in the workplace through a wide range of wellbeing initiatives.
ABOUT CARDIOVASULAR DISEASE AND HEART MONTH
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is a general term for conditions affecting the heart or blood vessels. This includes conditions like coronary heart disease, cerebrovascular disease, peripheral arterial disease, angina, heart attack, congenital heart disease, stroke or vascular dementia. CVD can be caused by a combination of behavioural and environmental risk factors, such as unhealthy diet, obesity, excessive alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, smoking, or high levels of stress. Family history and ethnic background can also affect a person’s risk of cardiovascular disease. Symptoms of CVD depend on the specific condition and may not always be visible. You can find out more about a specific heart disease condition on the British Heart Foundation website.
7.6 million people are living with a heart or circulatory disease in the UK.
Although the UK’s age-standardised death rate from heart and circulatory diseases (CVD) has declined by three quarters since 1961, more work needs to be done and Heart Month presents an excellent opportunity to raise awareness, encourage discussions around prevention, and support causes that promote heart health in the local community. Workplaces can also play a crucial role in raising raising awareness around cardiovascular health and encourage employees to take positive steps towards a heart healthy life.
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6 WAYS TO SUPPORT HEART HEALTH IN THE WORKPLACE
CVD’s cost to the UK economy (including premature death, disability and informal costs) is estimated to be £28 billion each year.
Given that the majority of cardiovascular diseases can be prevented by addressing behavioural and environmental risk factors, workplaces can play a huge part in increasing awareness of heart health through the introduction of wellbeing initiatives and programmes. Many people are more successful with adopting healthy lifestyles when supported by a conducive workplace environment that promotes healthy eating, physical activity, and healthy habits. There are a number of simple and effective ways you can help your employees on a journey to improved heart health.
Raise awareness of CVD
Provide employees with information and tools that can help them understand the risk factors associated with CVD and what simple steps they can take every day to look after their heart. Share relevant resources like booklets, articles, videos and podcasts via Intranet or book our Healthy Heart Webinar that can help inspire your staff to make positive lifestyle changes.
Healthy tips from Heart Research UK to equip employees with some simple, practical steps they can take every day to eat better, move more and look after their heart.
Booklets and guides from British Heart Foundation to help employees understand the facts about heart and circulatory disease
High Blood Pressure: A chat with a cardiac nurse podcast - Ticker Tapes and BHF
Healthy lifestyle and blood pressure leaflet - Blood Pressure UK
Help employees to get an insight into their current state of health by providing them with annual health checks.
Although the NHS provides a free health check, it is available only to people aged 40 and over and is done every five years. This means that many of your employees may have never been offered a health check or they don't get them regularly enough, and therefore are not fully aware of their current state of health.
Offering annual Employee Health Checks for all staff can help with the early identification of not only high blood pressure, which is often referred to as a 'silent killer', but also high cholesterol and health conditions such as diabetes when they are asymptomatic in their initial stages. By identifying red flags early on, employees can make any necessary changes to their lifestyle and work closely with their healthcare professionals to develop personalised strategies that promote disease prevention and management. This preventative approach and early intervention can significantly improve employee's health and reduce the burden of chronic diseases. Ultimately, for you as an employer it can help reduce sickness absence rates and increase productivity among the staff.
Promote healthy eating
Unhealthy diet can lead to obesity, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes, which can all increase the risk of developing heart and circulatory diseases. The arteries can become damaged and fatty deposits can start to build up which can lead to a heart attack or stroke. Eating the right sort of foods in the right amount is one of the most important things people can do for their overall health.
The workplace is an ideal place to spread the message for healthy eating strategies. Here are some ideas for effective nutrition-focused wellness initiatives:
Provide educational tools and resources to help employees understand the impact of food choices on the health of the heart and blood vessels and what simple, practical steps they can take to eat healthy to reduce the risk of heart and circulatory diseases.
Here are some examples:
You could also book our Nutrition and Healthy Eating Webinar to help employees learn more about the importance of nutrition and its impact on health and wellbeing.
Host a cookery workshop to help employees learn how to prepare quick, healthy meals that are easy to replicate at home.
Organise 1-2-1 sessions with a dietician who can give your staff professional, evidence-based advise and help them to create their own personalised, heart-healthy meal plans.
Dedicate one day a week to distribute free fruit to your staff and call it for example 'Fruit Mondays'. It is a simple way to help employees switch from less healthy snacks to something more nutritious. Fruit platters could include some lesser-known fruits and could be customised with themes, such as tropical selections for summer.
Ensure that contracts with outside caterers for snack services, company buffets and events, work canteen, or vending machines specify that healthier food options are always available.
Make sure that salad bars, fresh fruit and a selection of nutrient-rich food options are in a prominent place in the work canteen.
Offer ‘taste and try’ days with a selection of healthy snacks.
Send out a monthly newsletter with healthy recipes and encourage staff to share their own recipes with colleagues.
Make the most of opportunities to engage your staff around the importance of eating well and promote events like Healthy Eating Week.
Help your employees get more active
While many employees are increasingly adopting sedentary lifestyles, working behind computer screens and sitting at desks for most of the day without having any microbreaks for a quick stretch, others in industries like manufacturing are standing in the same position for long periods of time. A recent study from the University of Sydney, which analysed data collected from more than 80,000 UK-based adults over a period of eight years, has found that sitting for over 10 hours a day increased cardiovascular disease and over the long-term, standing could increase the risk of circulatory issues, such as varicose veins and deep vein thrombosis.
Regular exercise will make the heart and blood circulatory system more efficient, lower cholesterol levels and help keep the blood pressure at a healthy level. A strong heart can pump more blood around the body with less effort and as a result reduces the risk of having a heart attack. The NHS advises that adults should try to be active every day and aim to achieve at least 150 minutes of physical activity over a week through a variety of activities.
Physical activity doesn't just contribute to an individual's health and wellbeing, but it’s also a vital component of a healthy and productive workplace. Helping your staff to be physically more active at work can bring a number of benefits to you as an employer and doesn’t have to be difficult.
Provide your staff with health and wellness education so that you can help them understand the importance of physical activity and how it contributes to their overall wellbeing. Our Move More, Sit Less Webinar can give your staff practical tips for ways to build more physical activity into their daily routines and help them set goals to lead a more physically active lifestyle. You can also share with them useful websites that offer advice and support to stay active:
Couch to Fitness - a free and flexible at-home online exercise plan for beginners. The multiweek plan involves 3 video sessions a week, with rest days in between so you can take it at your own pace.
This Girl Can - a nationwide campaign encouraging women to get active and reduce the gender gap in sport and physical activity. It offers help and advice for women, such as online community and This Girl Can app.
We Are Undefeatable - a movement supporting people with a range of long-term health conditions. The purpose is to support and encourage finding ways to be active that work with each person’s conditions, not against them.
Sport in Mind - a charity offering a wide range of sports and physical sessions for anyone over 17 experiencing mental health problems as well as carers.
Every Body Moves powered by Toyota - a campaign to connect disabled people with opportunities to get active. Various different sports sessions, local facilities, as well as online activities can be found using their ‘Activities near me’ section. There are almost 6000 different opportunities across the UK!
Promote active commuting by introducing The Cycle to Work Scheme - a salary-sacrifice employee benefit that enables staff to save up on the cost of a new bike and safety equipment. In the case of the Cycle to Work scheme, hire payments are sacrificed from an employees’ gross monthly salary, with employers seeing a reduction in their gross monthly salary. These payments are not subject to income tax and National Insurance Contributions (NICs).
Provide your own recreational or sports facilities at work or provide gym memberships for your employees. You could try to negotiate corporate discounts for the staff at nearby gyms and leisure facilities.
Incorporate physical activity into meetings by turning some of the meetings into ‘walking meetings‘ where employees can discuss matters and collaborate while taking a walk.
Invite a personal trainer to the workplace to conduct fitness classes during lunch breaks.
These could be for example yoga classes to help stretch and relax, body conditioning workout to improve overall fitness, or Zumba classes for a fun and enjoyable exercise.
Encourage staff to start a walking club at work. Workplace Walking - a project toolkit from Paths for all charity can provide you with some information and resources that will help staff start their walking club and promote it in the workplace.
Organise a step challenge to encourage employees to be more active by tracking and counting the number of steps taken over a certain period of time. You could organise it as an individual competition in which each participant competes against one another, or as a team-based challenge in which everyone’s steps are combined to achieve one goal.
You may also think about some rewards as incentives for employees to join the step challenge, e.g. offering gift vouchers for the winning team. Some wellbeing campaigns like National Walking Month in May are a great opportunity to engage your staff in the challenge.
If you are based in Scotland, your workplace could take part in the The Step Count Challenge which runs two national challenges a year in the spring and autumn. The walking challenge involves teams of five who compete with other Scottish workplaces and can win prizes. The teams are provided with regular updates and motivation to keep them walking and can track progress on the leaderboards.
Encourage staff to drink less alcohol
Drinking too much alcohol can not only increase the risk of having a heart attack and stroke, but it can also lead to the development of vascular dementia and Type 2 diabetes. With deaths from alcohol being the highest among people of working age, and alcohol harm costing the UK economy billions every year, workplaces can make a big difference to public health by supporting and encouraging employees to limit alcohol consumption and drink alcohol within the recommended guidelines. Some simple actions include:
Provide information and resources on how to cut down on alcohol and encourage responsible drinking practices to reduce alcohol-related harm. Share relevant resources like booklets, articles, videos and podcasts via Intranet, or book our Alcohol Awareness Webinar to help your staff understand health risks associated with alcohol and encourage responsible drinking habits to minimize harm.
Here are some examples of the resources that you could share with your staff:
Organise mocktail making classes for staff to help them learn how to create delicious non-alcoholic cocktails.
During company's events make sure that there are plenty of non-alcoholic alternatives. You may also want to organise a mocktail bar for your staff.
Include 'A Mocktail of the Month' section in your monthly wellbeing newsletter with the recipe for non-alcoholic drink and encourage staff to share their mocktail recipes too. You can find some inspiration here.
Support various alcohol-free challenges and initiatives in the workplace, for example Dry January, Alcohol Awareness Week or Sober October. Whole teams can complete challenges together as an opportunity for team bonding and you can show your employees that they have your support to transform their relationship with alcohol should they choose to.
If you are aware that some of your employees may be struggling with alcohol addiction, provide them with accessible information about different treatment options, support groups or counselling services in the local area, and allow time off work to attend therapy. There are also many organisations and charities that provide support and help:
Drinkchat from DrinkAware
Drinkchat is a free service for anyone who is looking for information or advice about their own, or someone else’s alcohol use. Their trained advisors are on hand between 9am and 2pm every weekday to give people confidential advice through an online chat service.
Drinkline from DrinkAware
Drinkline is a free, confidential helpline for anyone who is concerned about their drinking, or someone else's. Helpline: 0300 123 1110 (weekdays 9am–8pm, weekends 11am–4pm)
AA is a free self-help group. Its programme involves getting sober with the help of regular support groups. Apart from AA meetings, they also offer free national helpline.
Offers free and confidential advice on alcohol via online chat. It also has an online tool to find alcohol services in the local area.
A charity which offers a national network of meetings and online training programmes with comprehensive teaching materials and manuals.
Health at work: Alcohol Awareness toolkit from British Heart Foundation can also give you some further ideas, tools and advice to organise successful wellbeing initiatives to alcohol awareness in your workplace.
Support employees to stop smoking
According to Ash, about one out of every eight people in the UK smokes (11.9%) and smoking is responsible for around 80,000 deaths a year in the UK. Quitting smoking will lower the levels of cholesterol and fats circulating in the blood, which will help to slow the build-up of new fatty deposits in the arteries. British Heart Foundation estimates that just after one year of quitting smoking, the risk of heart attack will have halved compared with a smoker's. As smoking remains a significant public health issue, workplaces can play a crucial role in smoking cessation by raising awareness about smoking and providing information on how to quit. Here's what you can do to support your staff:
Implement a comprehensive policy that prohibits smoking in the workplace, including indoor and outdoor areas. You should clearly communicate the policy to all employees, for example through meetings, emails, and posters.
Conduct regular campaigns to educate employees about the health risks of smoking and the benefits of quitting. Use various communication channels like newsletters, emails, and posters to promote smoking cessation resources. It would be a good idea to ask employees who have successfully quit smoking to share their success stories. You could also book our Smoking Cessation Webinar so employees can learn the best ways to give up smoking.
Examples of the resources that you could share with your staff include:
NHS Better Health - Quit Smoking including free NHS Quit Smoking app
Encourage staff to take part in the wellbeing campaigns like Stoptober, No Smoking Day, or World No-Tobacco Day. You could set up a display with posters and leaflets and invite an Occupational Health Advisor to your workplace to talk to your employees about the benefits of quitting and provide information on support services.
Ensure that your staff knows how to access smoking cessation programmes and services. Provide them with information about their local NHS Stop Smoking Service so that they can get advice and support to quit smoking. You can encourage staff even more by allowing them to attend local stop smoking services during work time without loss of pay.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CPR TRAINING IN THE WORKPLACE
A cardiac arrest can happen to anyone at any time. Performing quick CPR in the event of a cardiac arrest can be the difference between life and death. However, many people still don't know how to perform CPR with the British Heart Foundation reporting that nearly half of UK adults (43 per cent) have never learnt CPR.
"Every moment matters when someone has a cardiac arrest, and being able to step in and perform CPR could be the difference between life and death. A cardiac arrest can affect anyone, at any time, so we want as many people to learn CPR as possible."
You could give your employees the confidence to save a life by teaching them CPR in your workplace for free with the individual or group version of RevivR - British Heart Foundation's free and easy-to-use online CPR training course. CPR training would equip your employees with the knowledge and confidence to act decisively in emergencies.
With working adults spending a third of their waking hours in work, workplaces are well-placed to take simple steps to raise awareness of CVD and promote cardiovascular health. By taking a proactive approach to address heart health and implementing various wellbeing initiatives, employers can make a positive impact on employees overall health. Ultimately, this can reduce sickness absence in the workplace and increase productivity among the staff. Moreover, wellness programmes can elevate organisation’s reputation as a supportive employer, which is crucial for attracting and retaining top talent in a tight labour market.
Get in touch with us today to see how we could support your employees' cardiovascular health through our wide range of wellbeing initiatives.
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