WORKPLACE: Office Yoga, Lunchtime Meditation, Workday Football Matches, etc now more than a fad!

The phenomenal growth in health and wellness programs is not a passing fad but part of a new and healthier workplace paradigm at many offices, according to some of Perth’s leading chief executives. The CEO Voice series — hosted by the Australian Institute of Management WA and The West Australian newspaper — this week heard that office yoga, lunchtime meditation and workday football matches have become de rigueur at many workplaces. But while there is widespread agreement that measures that care for employee welfare generally provide positive returns, there are questions over what constitutes an effective program. Are all employers getting bang for their buck, or are they simply throwing money at ineffective providers seeking to cash in on the health and wellness revolution? Furthermore, do the programs address the big issues of alcoholism and mental health — the two problems with the biggest impact on wellness and workplace productivity? Or are the programs focused on relatively simple issues experienced by the least vulnerable employees in the workplace? Keynote speaker Rob Bransby, managing director of HBF, said employers need to take the issue seriously, claiming comprehensive health and wellness programs improve productivity as well as reduce absenteeism, workers compensation claims and costly staff turnover. “Are managers expected to be concerned about the personal welfare of their (staff) as well as their business’ key performance indicators?” he said. “I say yes.” HBF takes a holistic view about how to care for its staff, providing physical, career, community, financial, emotional and social support. “It’s just not about moving more and eating less,” he said. About 200 businesses in Perth contract HBF to provide health and wellness support for 17,000 employees, some spending more than $150,000 a year, but Mr Bransby claims many employers pay lip service to the notion of looking after staff. “How often does a CEO get up in front of a group of people and say our best asset is our people,” he asked. “(But) not too many say (they) put a lot of money into health and wellness.” The case for adopting such programs is based on a compelling set of statistics, Mr Bransby said. Healthier Workplace WA claims the unhealthiest workers take nine times more sick days a year than healthy workers, and healthy workers are three times more productive than their unhealthy counterparts. The direct cost to Australian employers of stress-related absenteeism and presenteeism is $10.11 billion. On average, more than three days are lost to stress per worker per year. The issue takes on a greater dimension when you consider the ageing workforce means the number of post-retirement age employees will jump from 12.9 per cent at present, to 17.3 per cent in 40 years time. “These are people who in the future will be on your payroll,” he said. Mr Bransby said workplace design had a role to play in promoting health and wellness. HBF spent $800,000 on providing its 150 staff with stand-up, sit-down desks, connected to apps that record standing time. That is in response to evidence that sustained immobility significantly increases the likelihood of diabetes, heart disease, obesity and cancer. Mr Bransby said he expected one day every employee would be given an Apple watch, which has an accelerometer, a heart rate monitor and sensors that report daily activity and workouts, prompting users to get up and walk if they are sedentary for too long. The emergence of such measures has been criticised by some as Big Brother tactics, but Mr Bransby said talented employees, especially those from Gen-Y, choose employers that offer such programs. Palmerston Association chief executive Sheila McHale said the benefit of such programs was recognised but most of them failed to address the biggest problem in the workplace — alcohol. Alcohol and other drugs cost Australian workplaces $6 billion a year in lost productivity and absenteeism. “The impact of alcohol on the workplace is bigger, surprisingly, than it is on the health and the criminal systems,” she told the forum. Ms McHale said society had developed a much more empathetic response to mental health problems, but employers still took a punitive approach to workers who made alcohol-related mistakes, often imposing three-strikes and you’re out policies. “There is a gap in relation to health and wellness programs and alcohol,” she said. “And there is an attitude problem, a reluctance to look at our responses to alcohol, even though we know it is the biggest drug problem in Australia and the biggest cost to workplaces.” PwC partner Tricia Tebbutt said employers needed to build trust within the workforce by ensuring that an admission of a problem was not linked to disciplinary action. Cancer Council chief executive Susan Rooney said the council had recognised this challenge. To counteract this, the council embedded in its policies a statement to encourage workers to seek help for alcohol-related problems, and a promise to help them address these issues. There were similar problems with mental illness, Lifeline WA chief executive Fiona Kalaf said. She said there was still a stigma attached to mental illness and this discouraged workers from seeking help from their employers. Likewise, employers failed to address it in their workplace programs, partly because of general failure to recognise the symptoms. She said it was imperative to change the culture, given the fact that at any one time, 20 per cent of the workforce was likely to be struggling with mental illness. “We started decades ago in risk management framework, protecting an employee (from harm), and over the past decade we have moved into physical health and safety,” she said. “But I think a lot of employers are still coming to grips with how to manage those risks let alone (figuring out) how to help people mentally in the workplace.” Diabetes WA health services prevention unit manager Laura Zappa agreed workplace programs needed to have a greater focus on mental health and alcohol, but said these addressed such issues indirectly by promoting a healthier workplace culture. She said that employers considered alcohol to be “off limits” in workplace programs. “Coming from a (previous) position where I was trying to sell policy and supportive workplaces to employers, alcohol is an area they don’t want to go near,” she said. “They see it as a person’s own responsibility.” The participants in the forum agreed it was challenging to find wellness measures that appealed to all staff, with introverts and extroverts typically responding to different things. Furthermore, the people least likely to engage in workplace programs, such as group yoga, were often the ones who were most in need. Wood & Grieve Engineers chief executive Jose Granado said his firm sought to appeal to all types by using a vast array of programs, including professional massages, lunchtime football and cricket matches, and twice-weekly flex and stretch classes. Mr Granado said it was well worth the cost, claiming his company did not cut any programs during the global financial crisis. “We spend a third of our lives at work — that’s a hell of a long time to be unhappy at work,” he said. Heart Foundation chief executive Maurice Swanson agreed wellness initiatives were well worth the cost because they prevented costlier health problems. He said the urgent need for preventative programs had not filtered through to the healthcare sector where only 1.7 per cent of Australia’s total $160 billion expenditure was spent on prevention. But not all wellness programs are created equal, and some employers were wasting money by failing to measure the results and customise their programs, according to Eoghan McKenna, managing director of Logic Health. Mr McKenna said one client spent $200,000 on wellness programs with another provider but had no measure of how well it had worked. He said he implemented a measurement system that reduced that company’s overall program spending by directing it more strategically based on concrete metrics. Lotterywest chief executive Paul Andrew said managers needed to lead by example. Failure to do so made the programs appear to be lip-service efforts, under-mining efforts to change the culture. Taryn Quartermaine, manager of Health on the Move, confirmed staff engagement was highly influenced by senior managers, in what she called the “trickle down” effect. Russell Gibbs, chief executive of property group Hawaiian, said the focus on health was now so prominent that rental properties not offering end-of-trip facilities were penalised. He said programs were often cut in tough economic times, but he urged employers to maintain them. “Do it because it is the right thing to do,” he said. http://news.yahoo.com/many-reap-rewards-wellness-232408800.html

CLIMATE CHANGE: Soil Releasing Carbon Dioxide to Atmosphere Faster than anyone thought! - Oregon State University Study

In a study published in this week's online edition of the journal Nature Climate Change, the researchers showed that chemicals emitted by plant roots act on carbon that is bonded to minerals in the soil, breaking the bonds and exposing previously protected carbon to decomposition by microbes. The carbon then passes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2), said the study's coauthor, Markus Kleber, a soil scientist in OSU's College of Agricultural Sciences. He said the study challenges the prevailing view that carbon bonded to minerals stays in the soil for thousands of years. "As these root compounds separate the carbon from its protective mineral phase," he said, "we may see a greater release of carbon from its storage sites in the soil." It's likely that a warming climate is speeding this process up, he said. As warmer weather and more carbon dioxide in the air stimulate plants to grow, they produce more root compounds. This will likely release more stored carbon, which will enter the atmosphere as CO2—which could in turn accelerate the rate of climate warming. "Our main concern is that this is an important mechanism, and we are not presently considering it in global models of carbon cycling," Kleber said. CO2 is a major driver of the current warming of Earth's atmosphere. By failing to account for accelerated soil-carbon decomposition, the study suggests, current climate-change models may be underestimating carbon loss from soil by as much as 1 percent per year. "There is more carbon stored in the soil, on a global scale, than in vegetation or even in the atmosphere," said Kleber. "Since this reservoir is so large, even small changes will have serious effects on carbon concentrations in the atmosphere, and by extension on climate." One percent may not sound like much, he added. "But think of it this way: If you have money in the bank and you lose 1 percent per year, you would be down to two thirds of your starting capital after only 50 years." Between 60 and 80 percent of organic matter entering the soil gets broken down within the first year in a chain of decomposition that ends with CO2, Kleber said. Most of the remaining carbon gets bound to the soil's minerals through a variety of physical and chemical mechanisms. When this happens, the carbon is protected because the microbes can't get at it to break it down. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-03-soil-susceptible-climate.html#jCp

WORLD HEALTH DAY: UN stresses importance of food safety – from farm to plate

With the United Nations health agency highlighting food safety on World Health Day, the Secretary-General today called for unified efforts to ensure that production, distribution, and preparation of food is done safely. “The health, agriculture, trade, and environment sectors need to work together,” said Ban Ki-moon. “We all have a role to play in keeping food safe – from farm to plate.” Mr. Ban pointed to the more than 200 diseases that can come from contaminated food and to the constantly evolving threat from new production, distribution and consumption methods, as well as the emergence of resistant bacteria. “With the food supply chain stretching around the world, the need to strengthen food safety systems within and among countries is becoming more critical,” he said. “That is why, on World Health Day, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling on countries and all actors to improve food safety from farm to plate and everywhere in between.” With the food supply chain stretching around the world, the need to strengthen food safety systems within and among countries is becoming more critical. To mark the day, the WHO released new data on the harm caused by foodborne illnesses and the global threat posed by unsafe foods. “Food production has been industrialized and its trade and distribution have been globalised,” said WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan. “These changes introduce multiple new opportunities for food to become contaminated with harmful bacteria, viruses, parasites, or chemicals.” The WHO's findings are part of a broader ongoing analysis of the global burden of foodborne diseases, the full results of which will be released in October, and they show that 582 million cases of 22 different foodborne diseases were reported in 2010, with 351,000 deaths from diseases including Salmonella, E.Coli and norovirus. Most cases were recorded Africa and South-East Asia and 40 per cent of those suffering from food-borne diseases from contaminated food were children under five years-old. In response, Dr. Chan stressed the need for coordinated, cross-border action across the entire food supply chain to ensure food safety as she launched World Health Day under the slogan 'From farm to plate, make food safe.' “A local food safety problem can rapidly become an international emergency,” she said. “Investigation of an outbreak of foodborne disease is vastly more complicated when a single plate or package of food contains ingredients from multiple countries.”