The secret is...150 minutes per week!
- By Vivienne Rowland
It’s official: We all need to take our health at work into our own hands and start jogging between offices, take the stairs more often and go for walks during lunch instead of munching on unhealthy foods.
This stretches to not only the office chair or water cooler, but to all areas of our lives. Research says we only need 150 minutes of exercise per week to stay fit. Sound easy?
Two Wits units, the Department of Psychology and the School of Statistics and Actuarial Science were instrumental in the Discovery Healthy Companies Index, announced in June 2011, after months of searching for the healthiest company in South Africa.
The Healthy Company Index was developed as a joint venture between Discovery Vitality, Wits, the University of Cape Town and Prof. Ron Goetzel from Emory University and Thomson Reuters. The survey aimed to assess and understand the health status of South African employees, measuring how well companies fare in providing activities to promote healthy lifestyles in the workplace.
Companies can use the results to support their employees to become healthier and more productive, create an environment that encourages healthy behaviour and lifestyles; and attract and retain valuable people by showing that they value the health and wellbeing of their employees.
Head of Discovery Vitality Wellness Dr Craig Nossel (MBBCH 1995) said the Index provided the country with valuable insight into health and health risks that face corporate South Africa. “It provides us with an excellent data set to benchmark and track these key health issues over time, whilst also being able to evaluate which initiatives are having a positive impact on peoples’ health and companies’ productivity,” he said.
The honour for the healthiest South African company overall went to BGS Africa, a corporate business and software solutions company, followed by Vital Health Food in second place and Cadiz Holdings, an independent financial services group in third place. The other companies in the top 10 were Mazars, Lombard Insurance, Eli Lilly South Africa, Virgin Active, Magna Carta Public Relations, St. Stithians College and Johnson Matthey.
Some of the key aspects of the survey showed that:
- 63% of employees are at an unhealthy weight
- 82% of employees do not eat enough fruit and vegetables every day
- 15.2% were admitted to hospital at least once in the past year
- 71.6% had a Vitality Age (an estimate of a person’s health by looking at certain health factors) higher than their actual age; and
- high cholesterol levels, body mass index and smoking had the largest impact on the higher Vitality Age for all companies.
All of these plus poor nutrition, high alcohol intake and high levels of stress are all known to increase a person’s risk of developing chronic diseases of lifestyle. The report also notes that 81% of employees are not doing enough exercise. People should be doing at least 30 minutes of moderate physical activity on five or more days of the week to enjoy cardiovascular benefits, but the lifestyles of many employees do not make much space or time for a lot of physical activity, as most office jobs require many hours sitting at a desk or in meetings every day.
A psychologist in the psychology department in the Wits School of Human and Community Development, Prof. Karin Milner says the Index was a valuable tool for current and future research.
“The Healthy Companies Index was designed as a research project to look more carefully at the health status of employees in the South African economy and corporate world. In addition to the awards, we looked at some broader research objectives to estimate the burden of chronic disease, to assess their wellbeing and facilities, to assess the extent to which South African employees engage in healthy behaviour and estimate the burden of chronic diseases and the percentage of South African employees at risk,” says Milner.
The categories in which awards were given included healthiest workplace, highest motivation to improve health, greatest health knowledge, healthiest eating habits, best shape, most physically active, most smoke free; and most conducive working environment.
The survey included 101 participating companies, of which employers provided email addresses for 58 737 employees who were eligible to participate. From this, 13 578 employees completed the online survey.
Click here for a slideshow of the report.