Health prevention: a performance tool available to managers
Occupational health prevention: just another management tool
The resurgence of the COVID-19 pandemic this fall continues to disrupt organizational routines for companies in France and, more broadly, around the world. Successive lockdowns have led to widespread adoption of remote work in the medium to long term. And with new practices come new challenges. Forced and accelerated sedentary lifestyles are having disastrous consequences for many employees and companies.
“The Human” in the workplace is touted as the new paradigm, but the body and how it functions during work are often overlooked. Nevertheless, even in the digital age, the body remains our primary tool for work. Today, we must go further by developing effective health prevention measures, in collaboration with team managers, to ensure sustained efficiency and productivity.
The Key Role of Managers in Workplace Health Promotion
Attracting and retaining talent, team performance, motivation, change management… managers are on the front lines, and even more so in today’s war for talent.
They need practical new tools—first and foremost for themselves. They may be suffering physically or even psychologically, particularly from stress and fatigue. They lack concrete, immediately actionable solutions to maintain their health and performance, and they bear increasingly broad responsibilities toward their teams, both in terms of productivity and health (mental and physical). Finally, they are the primary drivers of corporate culture transformation.
Training them in best practices for workplace health is key to implementing an internal risk prevention policy for remote workers. In this era of new remote work agreements, being a manager means, first and foremost, learning from the past few months. For example, has the health of my teams been affected? What is their feedback on the practices and resources implemented by the company? What did we do well, and what needs to be improved?
The next step is to implement clear measures to prevent stress and tension at the very heart of the company’s remote work structure. A genuine workplace wellness strategy developed in collaboration with management will help reduce the risk of absenteeism by preventing lifestyle-related ailments—such as eye strain, neck and shoulder tension, back pain, mouse arm, fatigue, anxiety, insomnia, and concentration issues—which affect 80% of employees[2]. Words and broad principles are no longer enough! Managers must receive proper training in healthy workplace practices. By demonstrating concrete exercises for physical and mental breaks to their teams and integrating them into their management routines, they can help prevent and alleviate symptoms related to stress, a sedentary lifestyle, and screen-based work.
Working healthily from home or at the office by sharing daily routines
When managers feel good physically and mentally, they become the company’s leading advocates for its health promotion policy.
By sharing a daily routine and ideas for exercises to do during a break or at the start of a meeting—like a regular reminder—managers pass on the techniques they themselves have explored and incorporated. In this way, they help the company boost productivity through the benefits of simple daily exercises, while also easing tensions among employees to improve team relationships over the long term.
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[1] The Hidden Cost of Absenteeism at Work – Sapiens Institute 2018
[2] Ministry of Labor, Employment, Vocational Training, and Social Dialogue, 2016
