Corporate Fitness Melbourne – Inspiring Wellness In The Workplace

Having a team that is great at their job helps your business immeasurably. Keeping them is something that should be at the top of your priority list. Retaining great talent and recruiting top performers are two ways in which you can get the most out of your business. But how do you retain and obtain talent? Corporate fitness in Melbourne has expanded, and it is becoming the global knowledge base for boosting staff wellness through workplace wellness.

We have already covered why corporate wellness is crucial to your business. Furthermore, we explained what employee wellbeing means. This article is going to focus more on corporate wellness in Melbourne specifically. Looking at the requirements, and how it has evolved for the benefit of everyone involved.

Corporate Fitness In Melbourne – The Ugly Truth

There is an extremely informative report conducted by Price Waterhouse Coopers Australia, and published by Healthier Work. That report proves that not only is work good for people, but that good health is beneficial to businesses, too. The prevention of chronic disease should be at the top of everyone’s priority list. Not only because it is the primary cause of disability and death worldwide, but it is a huge strain on families and businesses.

The old saying; prevention is better than a cure is paramount. However, when does it become too late for prevention? That time is, unfortunately, now. 50% of all Australians have at least one chronic disease. 60% of people over 65 years old have more than one. Further proving the dangers, around 90% of all deaths in Australia are connected to chronic diseases.

Chronic conditions have been rising throughout Australia for a long time. However, the increase is rising at an alarmingly rapid rate. For example, as we showed above, around 50% of the population has at least one condition. When you compare that to the statistics from only twelve years ago, you see that has increased from 42%.  Those are extremely alarming statistics.

Take a second to think about if the rate increase does not slow down. In only 72 years, 98% of the population will have at least one chronic condition to deal with. And that is if the rate doesn’t increase.

Melbourne, as the second-largest city in Australia, experience more of these health issues than most places in the country, and we aim to tackle that head-on.

What Are The Primary Conditions We Deal With?

The first step to dealing with corporate wellness in Melbourne is to understand which issues people are dealing with. Here is a list of the main diseases that Australians as a whole are dealing with:

• Mental and behavioural conditions – 4.8 million people (20.1%)
• Back problems – 4.0 million people (16.4%)
• Arthritis – 3.6 million people (15.0%)
• Asthma – 2.7 million people (11.2%)
• Diabetes – 1.2 million people (4.9%)
  • Type 1 – 144,800 people (0.6%)
  • Type 2 – 998,100 people (4.1%)
• Heart disease and stroke – 1.2 million people (4.8%)
• Bone disease – 924,000 people (3.8%)
• Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – 598,800 people (2.5%)
• Cancer – 432,400 people (1.8%)
• Kidney disease – 237,800 people (1.0%)

Most of the diseases on the list are reversible, and better still, avoidable altogether.

Going back to the Healthier Work report, one of the first things that they report on is that being employed has great mental health benefits. If we can reduce the strain of mental conditions alone, we would be removing a fifth of all chronic conditions.

Why Don’t Employers Do More?

Australia has unfortunately trailed behind the countries where medical bills are the employer’s responsibility. Focus is withdrawn from the health of colleagues and moved toward business growth and improvement. Private health insurance companies and the government pay those bills.

Therefore allowing employers to reduce their responsibility. We don’t think that we should shift to business health insurance for everyone. However, we do think that employers need to consider their teams’ wellbeing.

How Should The Shift Towards Corporate Fitness In Melbourne Happen?

While there is already a shift happening, more people need to be involved and take action. Three main social groups are involved in workplace wellness. They are:

• Healthcare system payers
• Employers
• Individuals

Each of the groups needs to work together on specific sectors to obtain and maintain workplace wellness. They are:

• Individual goals + Healthcare system payers = Lifestyle management
• Healthcare system payers + Employers = Injury management
• Individual goals + Employers goals = Corporate Wellness

As you can see, corporate wellness is the role of only two of those groups; employers and individuals. All three outcomes, injury and lifestyle management, and corporate wellness all fall into the individual and employer responsibilities.

Happy Melon is dedicated to making the incorporation between the two as seamless as possible. Therefore, assisting employers and their teams to increase all three areas.

Employers Need To Expand Corporate Fitness Initiatives, Soon

Employers want and need healthy, talented, mentally tough, and motivated teams that are productive and happy in both their working and personal lives. The chronic diseases that are encompassing the world, Melbourne included, are reducing the talent pool and changing the work environment, thus drastically impacting the financial situation of companies and lives.

Health and safety at work have been the focus of concern for most businesses over the last few years. While that has driven down payments for compensation and work-related injury, they have only looked into changing and reducing physical, chemical, and work hazards. However, some of the biggest risks that pose a threat to those areas are still abundant. For example, mental health, alcohol and drug abuse, and physical tiredness all contribute to those hazards, and fighting them has to be the next step.

How Can We All Integrate Corporate Fitness In Melbourne?

As you saw above, corporate wellness needs the input of two groups to work well; individuals and employers. The great thing is that you have them both right where you work. All you have to do is take action.

A survey on headsup.org.au showed that 77% of employees say work is their largest form of stress. Therefore, removing some of that stress from the workplace should be the primary goal for most businesses. That means that if you provide the right programs, at the right times to suit your team, the individual aspect of corporate fitness is taken care of. Most people are going to use the initiatives to reduce stress at any time that they can.

However, to prevent the increase of chronic disease, people need to change their own behaviour. That requires education and the right environment. There are five stages of behaviour change that you will need to encourage your team to go through:

Pre-contemplation

This stage is where most people are. They have no intention of changing as they feel their behaviour has an advantage. Education is the key to making people think about how it affects their lives and those around them. Most people need external pressure to take the step into the next stage. If there is any drop in that pressure or education, they can easily revert to this phase.

Contemplation

Here is where people start to realise that they have an issue. That can be seeing how their mental health is affected by their actions—lack of physical exertion, alcohol consumption, or other factors that they can change.

Preparation

People here understand the benefits of change. Furthermore, they start to plan for those changes. The most crucial step is to let people know about their intentions and give themselves a goal to meet.

Action

The action phase is where people actively change their habits. For example; removing bad food from their diet, stopping smoking, etc. This stage is often the hardest. However, the further through this stage people get, the more they see the benefits.

Maintenance

The longer that the maintenance phase continues, the better for everyone. However, it is not an easy task to complete, as there is no set end. There will be the temptation to deal with, although, the further people get into the maintenance stage, the less likely they are to relapse.

Happy Melon Have The Answer

Relapse is the struggle that almost everyone will face in their transition. However, relapse doesn’t have to be a complete failure. Learning from each recurrence of their old habits can help them to learn and move forward.

Luckily, corporate fitness programs can help teams with every step of the way. Increasing the number of businesses offering corporate fitness plans is the easiest, fastest, and most effective way to guide people through the tough decisions and downfalls of those steps.

Risk reduction is much higher in companies that participate in active coaching programs. For example, a study compiled of 173,901 health appraisals show that increasing participation of these programs significantly reduces at least five out of seven primary health risks. Those seven risks are:

• High blood pressure.
• Bodyweight.
• Cholesterol levels.
• Poor nutrition.
• Low physical activity.
• Stress. 
• Smoking. 

Corporate Fitness In Melbourne – Conclusion

In conclusion, corporate wellness is a huge industry requirement for Melbourne. However, too few people are considering the real benefits. For example, if you have a healthy workforce, they can cope with more challenging tasks, with more vigour and excitement. Subsequently, that increases the likelihood that your high performers will stay with your business, and you will attract new talent easier than companies who do not have corporate fitness programs.