Survival Guide At Work

At least 60% of Waking hours are spent at work.

We have to take our time at work seriously.

1. Why sitting or standing for prolonged periods of time is not good for us.

·         Physical inactivity directly contributes to high absence rates in the UK – the same number as smoking – and is reported to cost the UK and estimated 7.4 billion a year

We sit to commute. Sit at our computers. Sit at meetings. Relax…by sitting at home. Most adults sit for about 9.3 hours. And that’s bad news for health.

Even if you exercise before or after work but spend time sitting at work you are still classed as sedentary and hence will be in a high risk group.

What can you do?

·         Walk and Talk, Walk and Network Meetings

·         Get together to Exercise together. It is fun

·         Practice Simple Stretches Every Hour (get some fun ideas here)

·         Watch your Posture

·         Organise a session of a Desktop Yoga at your workplace

2. Nutrition and employee productivity are closely interlinked.

·         One third of what we eat or drink is consumed at work

·         Poor eating habits cost employers £16.85 billion a year, equivalent to a loss in productivity of almost 97 working million days (workplace survey)

The food we consume at work affect our blood sugar levels that in turn affects our mental and physical performance at work.

Mild dehydration of just 3% can bring employee performance down by 50 %.

What employees consume at the workplace is critical to business productivity.

What can you do?

·         Run Healthy Salads Competitions

·         Organise Wellbeing Wednesdays with Heathy Food

·         Introduce Fruit Basket

·         Offer Heathy Snacks and Plenty of Water

·         Run Educational Nutrition Talks (watch a short example)

3. We are getting more and more stressed

·         High pace of life, addicted to our devices, immense pressure to deliver.

Top Athletes have a lot to teach us.

·         It has been found that the performance demands that most people face at their work environments dwarf those of any Professional Athletes.

·         Athletes spend 80% of their time training in order to be able to perform 10% of the time.

·         Recovery Time is Very Important for Top Athletes in order to Achieve High Results.

Most of us spend little or no time systematically training or allowing ourselves some recovery time at work to replenish our mental and physical resources. And we are expected to perform at our best for 8-10 hrs a day every day.

What Can you do?

·         Take your breaks

·         Practice Digital Detox (60 min without your phone)

·         Propose offering mini-massage sessions at your workplace

·         Propose to create a chill out zone with games

4. Mental Wellbeing

Our brains are busier than ever before.

We’re assaulted with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour, all posing as information. Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting.

At the same time, we are all doing more. We got used to doing several things at once, multitasking, while still trying to keep up with our lives, jobs, our children and parents, our friends, our careers, our hobbies, and our favourite TV shows.

Neuroscientists tell us that the modern world of multitasking and distraction is bad for our brain.

What can you do for your Mental Wellbeing?

·         To avoid overstimulation of the brain we need to clear Mind Space on a daily basis and re-focus

·         Create quite zones at work

·         Practice Mindful Pause at your Desk (it takes only 3 min)

·         Watch a Business Leaders practicing a Mindful pause

 Would you like to join our Mindfulness Weekly group? Click here to join 

We support CIPD and RSA initiative: The Future of Work is Human