Preventive Wellbeing for a Healthy Workplace
imc Cares: Health Awareness Month at imc
Time to talk about health! Here at imc, August was all about preventive wellbeing and mindfulness. We all know the importance of mental and physical health, but that doesn’t seem to stop us from losing sight of what’s truly good for us and forgetting to look after ourselves. So, we decided it was time to try something different.
Everyone at imc was invited to spend a month exploring various options and offerings for staying active and looking after their own (mental) health and wellbeing. These included a wide range of inspiring talks as well as various activities that promote active and healthy lifestyles. It was an amazing month, so we’ve put together this recap of the main highlights and feedback.
Good health in the workplace is more than just a nice-to-have
Health and wellbeing are about our mental state – how we’re feeling, and how well we are able to cope with our working day. That’s why we believe it’s important to work on our mental health and wellbeing in the workplace on a regular basis – and not just when we’re having problems. So important, in fact, that in August we launched a comprehensive health awareness initiative. That’s in addition to the recently introduced online platforms voiio and My Seven Steps and regular health tips and recommendations.
imc HR manager Sarah Pitzius explains why this month meant so much to us: “My colleagues and I in HR felt it was important to put the spotlight on the health of our employees and health in general. The idea of having a wide range of formats was so that each employee could select live sessions with external providers of their own choosing and hence find out about the kinds of services available, so that they could take advantage of helpful offerings like yoga sessions or workshops and talk with other employees about health issues.”
Short and sweet: Ideas and tips from experts from around the globe
To focus in greater detail on topics like work-life balance, stress management and dealing with challenges, we invited both external speakers and members of our ambassador crew to give virtual live presentations. These experts from around the globe shared their knowledge and spoke from personal experience in a series of brief online sessions, giving the participants handy hints and ideas to try out for themselves.
Tyson Priddle was among the participating brand ambassadors. He explains why mental health is something worth investing in: “Thanks to my own personal experience and many conversations I’ve had with friends and acquaintances, I’m passionate about (mental) health. I believe that education and fostering open and honest dialogue about mental and emotional wellbeing are essential to maintaining good health.” And on the subject of health at work: “Given that we spend such a lot of time at work, we really need to get better at supporting each other and looking out for early signs that team members or colleagues might be experiencing difficulties.”
One of the external speakers said something highly memorable that sums this up rather well. He said we should all have the courage to ask our colleagues: “How are you? How are you, really?”.
Stay fit! Keeping fit and active at work
We all find it a struggle at times to fit regular exercise into our daily routine, so the addition of voiio to our employee benefits programme here at imc several months ago has been a big help. For August, we instituted a shared active lunchbreak to raise awareness of this platform’s benefits and many offerings. These include brief active movement sessions, which is how we all came to spend 15 minutes of our lunchbreaks doing neck and back exercises.
Also beneficial to our health are the “Flow & Focus” yoga sessions run by sales consultant Katharina Kunz. These sessions are held at regular intervals throughout the year, but in August Katharina delivered them every Wednesday – an employee coaching employees. “Sometimes we forget how beneficial a few minutes of controlled breathing and mindful movement can be when we are feeling stressed and unfocused,” Katharina says. “My aim with the ‘Flow & Focus’ sessions is to help my colleagues with this and enable them to consciously build this important time out into their schedules.”
There was also a mini smoothie bar, organised by one of our employees. Our lunchtimes were all the better for her homemade rock melon-and-pineapple and spinach-and-celery smoothies. Delicious and bursting with goodness.
Collective help through local initiatives
While it’s important to look after our own health, we also need to be prepared for situations where bad things happen, causing others to become dependent on us for help.
One such situation, which may be thrust upon any one of us at any time, is when we are called on to provide first aid. Here, proper training is key to being able to respond swiftly in a medical emergency. That’s why we organised a first aid course at our headquarters – so that anyone who wanted to could brush up on their skills.
Sometimes saving a life is a collective effort. Donating blood is a case in point, and so, in Melbourne and on the other side of the planet in Saarbrücken, our teams made time in their schedules to attend one of the blood donation slots on offer.
And the verdict? Let’s do it again!
For HR manager Jennifer Wilhelm, Health Awareness Month was a resounding success: “Our efforts have borne fruit. We have seen a marked increase in user numbers on voiio. And the feedback from the teams has been very positive, particularly the feedback on the workshop formats, so we will definitely be organising these sorts of special events again.”
Our aim going forward is to keep health and preventive wellbeing on the agenda. This won’t be a one-off campaign. We want to keep these important issues at front of mind with our employees, and to that end we plan to initiate various campaigns in the future. We are working towards this awareness goal with our Inspire sessions and with various infographics containing useful tips and recommendations. We are also looking at new leadership programmes to get our leadership personnel on board and help make them more mindful of these important issues.
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I' ve been working as a permanent member of the imc Marketing & Communication Team since 2021. The mix of creative content creation, social media and online marketing activities excites me the most about my job.
My goal is to inspire people with creative and innovative content and to make the imc brand more tangible.
My passion besides my job? Travelling a lot and discovering the world. I am always happy to receive feedback or suggestions at [email protected]!
