Having recently been appointed as Specialist Health and Wellbeing Consultant for Elixir Health, I again realised how important health and wellness programs are for organisations, whether big or small. There is an ever increasing need for employee wellbeing interventions that address the health risks of all the chronic diseases of lifestyle (CDL’s).

Employees are any business’ greatest asset. The management challenge is to maximise the return on investment for shareholders and company financial wellbeing, while understanding that high employee morale is essential to accomplish this, particularly in terms of the importance it plays in the long term success of any organisation. Employee health and wellbeing are two of the most important tools to ensure optimum production and creativity, with the added benefit of a happy, healthy workforce with high morale.

Wellness has become one of the clear roads to future human development and employee entitlement. The New Companies Act (based on the King 3 Report), to be implemented on 1 April 2011, will demand that companies fulfill the triple bottom line reporting, consisting of the usual financial, but then adding social responsibility (incl. employee skills development and health education; extending into communities) and environmental reporting. Employee wellbeing, or workplace wellness interventions, will ensure a simple and very effective solution to comply not only with this Act, but also the New Mining and Occupational Health Charters.

Wellness is a fountainhead of endless possibilities, a positive, pro-active drive into a better future for all. The wellness of employees will make all the difference to the bottom line profit margin. Wellness is a sound business strategy!

Examples of the chronic diseases of lifestyle, where wellness interventions play an important role in managing and reducing risk

• Identified health risks: High blood pressure, high total cholesterol (specifically high LDL,  low HDL, high triglycerides), high fasting blood sugar, obesity, high stress levels, especially mental-emotional distress
• Heart disease
• Metabolic syndrome
• Depression
• Diabetes mellitus
• Cancer
• HIV/Aids
• Tuberculosis
• Osteoarthritis

 Wellness in the workplace will improve labour relations:

      Employee entitlement to workplace wellness interventions

      Realisation that employees are a company’s most important assets

      Employees need assistance & support

      Decreased organisational conflict

      Ensure a better educated, empowered, informed workforce prepared to become partners in controlling health costs

      Increase productivity & creativity, profit, employee loyalty, commitment and morale

      Decreased sick leave, presenteeism, absenteeism and resignations

      Spreading goodwill, support and encouragement from management to employees – excellent for labour relations!

      Attractive recruitment tool for top job applicants, by projecting the image of a caring company 

To recap: A summarised definition of wellness

Wellness (root word ‘wholeness’) is a pro-active, dynamic process whereby the individual and the group become aware of the life choices and 'response-ability' they have, then taking the decision to make the right choices toward a life of quality and wellbeing. Deciding on a wellness lifestyle, would require everyone to become actively involved in their own health and wellbeing. By gaining more knowledge and insight into their own being, every employee becomes empowered to make the right choices to lead a healthier and more fulfilling life. It shifts the responsibility to the individual, to consciously become involved in their own health and happiness. It is a lifelong discipline that, with the help, facilitation and support of health and wellness professionals, will in the long-term, restore individual, family and community health.

Wellness is a conscious and continuous integrative process leading towards the enhancement of individual, organisational and community health and wellbeing.

Integrate (v.) means to combine and assimilate into complete functional wholeness, in this instance, of all dimensions of the human being.

Well-designed wellness programs are focused on maintaining the balance and harmony of all 6 levels or dimensions of human existence: physical body, mind, emotions, soul / spirit, social and occupational (including environmental) aspects. It is no longer acceptable to have diseases treated only symptomatically as a physical problem. The origin of the disease process has to be found by also looking at the soul, thought, beliefs and emotions - the areas where disease originates. Problems then need an integrative, holistic systems approach to reverse the disease process, to prevent disease and to learn to use disease as a teacher for working through the deeper levels of healing. There are various tools and techniques available to assist the body and mind in returning to peak metabolic performance level with a return to vitality and health, and optimal productivity.

An overview of wellness in organisations

According to some reports, we have about 2 years left before we destroy nature, ourselves, the whole world, all of existence! These are dire predictions from various reputable sources ranging from gnostic Nostradamus, psychologist Carl Jung, author and mystic Andrew Harvey, to astrologists, astronomers, Mayan Calendar specialist, scientists and naturalists. Taking current events such as global warming, climate extremes and 2012 predictions into consideration, we have to pay attention! Humankind has fallen into a morass of apathy and unconcern, a shoulder shrugging ‘who cares?’ attitude to life. To many people, life seems so threatening, the future so bleak, that a frenzied search for quick fix miracle cures and instant gratifications with its inevitable pendulum swing to hopelessness, helplessness, illness and depression have become the neuroses of our time.

Never before in human history has a positive wellness approach to health and wellbeing been more important. We can stop the wheel, not to get off, but to change its direction. We can make a difference through making the correct choices. Every single human being can look deep into his / her own soul and find the answers for the whole world’s salvation there, for a sustainable and environmentally conscious society and world. From the workplace to the home, the community to the world, the importance of each individual contribution has never been more important. Global communication has made the sharing of everyone’s special gifts and skills possible and of the utmost importance. Care of the soul has become the most important way to wellness in a changing world!

Wellness started on the physical plane with fitness, nutrition, complementary health options and weight management. Soon the need for emotional and intellectual interventions arose. Now, soul or spiritual wellness interventions have become of the utmost importance. There is a huge collective need for nourishment of the soul, to the more gentle female principle of receptivity, flow and heartfelt interaction with others, that will balance the power of the male principle of action, force, creative impulse, gone out of balanced control, ultimately leading to integration of male and female energies – a world in harmony! This is possible in our time.

In order to lead a wellness lifestyle, we need to maintain balance and harmony in all levels of our human existence: the physical, emotional, mental and soul aspects. This of course, would also include the occupational and social aspects. Soul is the manifestation and expression of universal spirit in each individual person, in the larger earth community and in the world around us. The soul is our inner being, our psyche, the part that exists beyond time and space. Soul provides us with a sense of knowing that we belong as part of the universe, giving us our sense of deeper meaning and our awareness of our purpose and goal in this life.

The real solutions to the dramatic increase and threatening workplace problem posed by the chronic diseases of lifestyle, and especially then heart disease and HIV/Aids, will lie in an integrative wellness approach where body, mind, emotions and soul work together for lasting wellness solutions. Peer, or now rather called wellness educator training or WET, is becoming an ever increasing practical way of ensuring and maintaining lasting health and wellness behaviour that help people change from within, from the deepest recesses of their minds, to the genetic imprint of their DNA. Peer educators themselves requested this name change. They feel that as wellness educators, their work will be much easier and better accepted by their peers. PET is still associated with HIV/Aids training only, while WET training is so much more! It includes the wellness solution based management for all the chronic diseases of lifestyle, incorporating and emphasizing heart health (high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease), mental-emotional health, immune system health (acute infections, TB, cancer, HIV/Aids), blood sugar balance (diabetes mellitus), stress management, basic anatomy, physiology, nutrition, lots of fun, etc! WET training is also becoming a very effective EAP tool as wellness educators become well known and trusted among their peers who start to confide in them for assistance. The WET’s then act as conduits for referral to EAP councillors and other health practitioners.

Statistics

Cardiovascular (heart and blood vessels) disease is the no. 1 killer in the world. Globally, every 5 minutes, 160 people die from this illness (health challenge). Worldwide, this is more than double the deaths from HIV/Aids, TB and malaria combined. In South Africa, the statistics are different, where Aids, TB and malaria cause at least 1000 deaths a day, but even here, heart disease comes very close as cause of death. These health challenges are cries from our souls for attention, as individuals as well as a society, the microcosm and the macrocosm. At the moment 150 million people worldwide are diagnosed with metabolic syndrome (high blood pressure, high blood lipids, obesity and diabetes mellitus or insulin resistance). This figure is expected to 300 million by 2020. Compare this to 35 million people who are HIV-positive worldwide, with 22 million of those in Africa, and it becomes clear that workplace wellness interventions must include addressing the risk of metabolic syndrome to every company’s health and wellbeing.

According to a recent Medical Research Council (MRC) report, heart disease is the second biggest killer of South Africans after Aids. Every single day 30 South Africans die from heart attacks and 60 from strokes. Most of these occur in people younger than 65 years of age. Heart disease is not the male only problem it was thought to be years ago. One out of four (25%) SA women younger than 65 is affected. Heart disease is the cause of death in 20% of all deaths in women. Heart disease, depression and diabetes mellitus often occur together, one leading to the other in a vicious circle of hopelessness and despair. The major causes of heart disease and diabetes mellitus are high levels of long term stress, lack of exercise, smoking and poor eating habits. We have to do something to change our thoughts to create a different reality!

There’s a move to environmental awareness through sustainable interventions taking biodiversity and biospheric factors into consideration, changing from how nature and resources can be forced to adapt to humans, to how we can lessen the impact of the human footprint on the natural environment. Employers understand that employees are their most important assets that through sustainable employee wellbeing programs, the social bottom line of the triple bottom line (the other two being financial and environmental) of the New Companies Act of 2010, can be easily reached and even exceeded, when doing the required integrated reporting. 

What we have to remember though, is that ultimately we all have to take self responsibility for our own health and wellbeing. We have to become pro-active, participate in the wellness programs, involved in our own wellbeing, by actually taking action: physically (healthy eating - fresh, organic fruit, veggies, nuts; exercise - enjoyable, fun, even 10-15 minutes a day), but also through how we think and feel (self awareness, reflective prayer, meditation, letting go of old hurts, injuries, resentment, regrets), how we change our attitudes to being more positive (working with our emotions every day, believing deep inside that what we want will happen), then taking appropriate action, reaching ever deeper to the yearning for a connection with our inner beings, our souls, our true and immortal selves.

Many of us stumble from one self-help programme to another without getting any real results. Why is this? Are the programmes ineffective? No, but we go on to the next quick fix or magic pill, whether medication, acupuncture, essential oils, or herbal remedies, because we count on the external item to do all the work and provide eternal happiness, while simultaneously healing or curing us. These external elements can only support us up to a point, and maybe show us the different choices and options we have to support us on our healing journey. But each one of us will have to do the inner work sometime, even facing the dark night of the soul, to ultimately heal from the inside out.

Self-help means taking personal responsibility. You have to apply what you learn. We are also facing an energetic overload with pollution, cyber loads through Internet, TV and cell phone lines crisscrossing our energy fields, we have this inner yearning for peace and happiness, we fear loss of our ego selves, and desperately search for external quick fixes, or medication, to drug, dull or tranquilise the spiritual crisis many of us are experiencing. A spiritual crisis often expresses in a physical or mental-emotional problem, and if we’re not aware of the need for spiritual direction, we can divert from an opportunity for transformation.

Spiritual wellness programs, providing real tools for inner transformation and growth, free from any specific religious content, have become an essential ingredient for Employee Wellbeing interventions.

In conclusion

Expected results of health and wellness interventions, that incorporates stress management as an essential ingredient, include improved productivity and creativity, higher levels of employee morale, reduced absenteeism and presenteeism (employees at work, but not optimally healthy or well), and improved day-to-day quality of working life for the employer and employee.

Cigarette smoking, poor nutrition, substance abuse, poor ergonomics (leading to back pain, headache, neck and shoulder spasm) and most importantly, high stress levels and depression, are major contributing factors to work related health problems and reasons for employee absenteeism and low morale. Many studies show psychological and physical factors in the workplace such as intense deadlines, poor interpersonal relationships, absence of a stimulating work environment, as well as inadequate job descriptions and too much responsibility, are also major contributors to increased health risk.

Preventative health and well care plans provide the solution. Working proactively to reduce the risk of developing disease, as well as the promotion of a wellness lifestyle to prevent and treat disease, empower the individual to recognise the danger signs of living an unhealthy lifestyle and educate employees about taking preventative measures to reduce the harmful effects of their behaviour.

People at grassroots level are desperate for information and knowledge. When facilitating workplace wellness interventions, the response from employees remain constant: they radiate and express feelings of goodwill and gratitude for being regarded and treated as intelligent human beings that want and need information to take control of, and self-responsibility for, their own health and wellbeing. This leads to mutual respect and understanding between management and employees, as well as acknowledgement and loyalty and a high morale – all of inestimable benefit to any company!

The day will come when nations will be judged not by their military or economic strength, nor by the splendour of the capital cities and public buildings, but by the wellbeing of their peoples; by their levels of health, nutrition and education - UNICEF: Progress of Nations 1999