| Effective
workplace health promotion |
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| HPB
provides training to promote
healthier workplaces. |
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The Health Promotion
Board’s (HPB)
curriculum for workplace health promotion
was revised in 2002. Now more comprehensive and flexible, the curriculum emphasises
customising tools and techniques for implementing effective corporate health
programmes.
A panel of specialists in the field was involved in reviewing workplace
health training strategies. Using a step-by-step resource, Essential
Guide
to Workplace Health Promotion, they revised
the curriculum by introducing and packaging different modules to
ensure relevance and effectiveness.
The curriculum emphasises equipping companies with evaluation tools
so that companies are more able to track the outcomes of their programmes.
As the marketing gurus say: “If you can’t measure it,
you can’t manage it.”
A
systematic, comprehensive approach
“Very often, companies seem to think of health needs assessment
as simply an interest survey — measuring what employees want,” said
Ms Mabel Chia-Yarrall, Manager of the Workplace Health Promotion Programme.
While that is somewhat true, what she advocates is a comprehensive health needs
assessment. This includes looking at corporate health screening and fitness assessment
results, as well as conducting organisational climate surveys to see if there
are health needs that can be benchmarked against national standards.
“These health needs relate to organisational stress levels, individual
cholesterol levels, hypertension levels and other health issues that might be
draining the
medical budget of the company.… Companies can customise programmes to meet
organisational and employee needs,” she said.
Reaping
the benefits
Many companies have benefited from the training provided by HPB.
Said Ms Sharon Pereira, Manager of Quality, Environment, Health and Safety Department,
Philips Electronics Singapore Pte Ltd, “Prior to attending the training
programme offered by HPB, I thought that healthier workplaces meant more sports
and games.”
She had also wondered how to improve Philips’ H.E.A.L.T.H. Award status.
She now knows more and Philips will be using the funds from the Workplace Health
Promotion Grant to colour-code canteen food, promote vegetables and engage caterers
who can offer healthier food.
“The training has provided us with a clear direction for strategising our
workplace
health promotion programmes,” said Ms Pereira. “We are no longer
second guessing what makes a Gold H.E.A.L.T.H. Award programme.”
Having gone through the training, OCBC Property Services’ IT Manager Wilfred
Foo was “convinced of the urgency of promoting health”. His company
was concerned about containing stress levels effectively and now he has an idea
of how to do so in an integrated and systematic manner. |
