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Maintaining a healthy heart can be essential for a long and fulfilling life.
If not taken seriously, the consequences could be fatal as coronary heart disease still remains one of the leading causes of death in the UK.
Recognising risk factors is key to prevention.
While some risk factors like age and genetics are permanent, others such as diet, exercise, and smoking habits are manageable.
Managers should consider the impact of work on their team’s cardiac wellbeing, taking proactive measures to foster a heart-healthy work environment.
To help you encourage healthy hearts focused on your workforce, we’ve identified five top tips to keep your teams working at their best.
Getting active
Staying active is incredibly important when maintaining a healthy heart and there is plenty an employer can do to help their team to stay active.
Motivate your team to opt for walking or cycling to work when feasible, and to stand and stretch at least once every half hour.
For those whose jobs allow, suggest taking conference calls or virtual meetings on the go, perhaps while enjoying a refreshing walk.
Eating well
Eating well can be challenging for some people.
To help combat this challenge you could increase the availability of nutritious choices in work areas, including canteens and vending machines.
If you provide a space for people to eat, make sure you have tools for your team to warm meals from home.
Try to motivate your colleagues to enjoy their lunch breaks outside of their usual workspaces when the weather is nice.
When catering for meetings or events, opt for healthier food options during these meetings, steering clear of sugary treats like cakes and biscuits, and limit alcohol-centric social events.
And finally, whenever possible, promote regular movement among staff, suggesting they stand and stretch at least once every half hour.
Avoiding Stress
Sometimes stress at work can happen, but prolonged stress may impact your heart health.
It often leads to unhealthy habits like excessive smoking, alcohol consumption, and intake of fats and sugars.
Encourage your team to take frequent breaks and adhere to their schedule.
Openly communicate with your staff, offering support to them if they find their tasks overwhelming. If possible, offer flexible schedules for remote workers to aid in achieving a healthier work-life balance.
Avoid pollution
The environment outside of the workplace can also have a major impact on your employees. To help prevent stress and illnesses from pollution, you could highlight routes that steer clear of congested traffic.
This also has a secondary positive effect of providing a more pleasant walking or cycling experience for those travelling to work.
Where possible, implement adjustable working hours to help your staff sidestep the busiest commuting times.
Raise awareness about the UK’s pollution forecasts and advise employees to avoid being outside when the pollution in your local area reaches high or very high levels.
Accessing support
If you have the use of an employee assistance programme (EAP), you need to make sure its benefits are well communicated to your employees as well as how to use it.
Does your EAP service include health assessments and screenings at work? If not, you may want to think about introducing one.
As mentioned previously, you could help to motivate individuals to quit smoking by directing them to supportive resources and groups.
It’s important to recognise that heart conditions may mean modifications need to be made to their job role, such as restrictions on heavy lifting or machinery operation due to medication.
In such cases, it’s crucial to have discussions about how their role could be adapted to meet their needs.
Proactive care of an employee’s heart health can be key to a longer, healthier more fulfilling life.
For more information and advice on how to improve the heart health of your workforce, or for any other wellbeing support, please visit the Bupa academy for workplace health and wellbeing.
