Bad News, Good NewsBad News: Stress Awareness Day saw the release of many statistics relating to stress in the workplace including the shocking 91% of staff saying they are stressed at work.Good News: NICE - the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence - will today launch new guidance for employers about how to improve mental wellbeing promotion. The guidance will include information on how to prevent stress and identify problems early. It promises to help save a 1,000-employe... Read Full Story

It's National Stress Awareness Day today and members of our team have been out in various businesses delivering a variety of yoga, relaxation and stress relieving wellbeing sessions. It's been a really encouraging and rewarding day.Many of the sessions were oversubscribed and we met loads of people who, rather than reporting that they feel weighed down with stress and are struggling to cope, arrived at the sessions fully appreciating that a certain level of stress is inevitable in an ambitio... Read Full Story

When it comes to getting staff excited about wellbeing, there's nothing like a good challenge. Take this recent headline about Nestle for example: Nestle staff walk more than eight kilometres a day in major wellbeing initiativeIt really goes to show how the right wellbeing initiatives can capture the imagination of staff and motivate them to action and to great results. We're all for this.During a recent leadership programme we ran a similar initiative and participants managed to walk up to... Read Full Story

Thanks to a new Big Brother-style gadget being adopted by American companies — and coming to Britain early next year — bosses can measure exactly how many calories you are burning in a day and compare the data with “performance benchmarks”. In other words: staying in shape might soon become as important as getting to the office on time.I'm all for new ways to motivate staff to improve their health and wellbeing and I'm sure this gadget will work for some. You can read more about it h... Read Full Story

The Government is to invest £4 million over the next two years in improving health and wellbeing for staff at small organisations.This is fantastic news for SMEs that may have been struggling to find or justify a budget for wellbeing. The other thing businesses of 1-249 people struggle with is time to plan initiatives in this area so if you'd like some help on how to design a wellbeing programme that could then be funded by the Government, we'd be happy to help come up with the solution that ... Read Full Story

Next Wednesday 4th November is National Stress Awareness Day and so is a great time for businesses to promote health and wellbeing initiatives in the office. Some of the studies we've done in various businesses over recent months show that over 75% of staff are stressed, this being reflected in high blood pressure readings, with more than half of these people categorised as experiencing moderate to severe hypertension according to the World Health Organisation Classifications.Blood pressure ... Read Full Story

Last week I came across 3 people who all claimed they suffer from panic attacks. The episodes they described, while cause for concern for each of the individuals, didn't actually sound like full on panic attacks and it got me thinking that everyone needs to be quite careful about how they label some of the things that happen to them each day. If you begin to think of any slight feelings of anxiety as panic attacks, there's a danger that you won't be able to keep daily challenges that we a... Read Full Story

November 4th sees Stress Awareness Day in the UK. We all know what it's like when you feel stressed - heart rate increases, you might feel a bit sick - but how about when your body is under stress but you don't even know it. This is when stress can be dangerous. So what are the best ways to reduce stress in all areas of your life?1. Get your blood pressure checked. High Blood Pressure is known as the silent killer because hypertension and coronary heart disease can go unnoticed until some... Read Full Story

Having decided that 'we sell a bunch of junk' Whole Foods Chief Executive John Mackey has gone on to suggest that his staff need to be able to advise people better about the choices they make in his stores and also that they must lead by example by looking and behaving more healthy themselves.We're all for good incentives to encourage people to make choices that work for them but this seems to have a little bit more of the stick than the carrot about it and could lead to some interesting repe... Read Full Story

At last, some research to support what we've known to be true for yearsVisit the HR Magazine website to read the full articleWritten by Jeff Archer, company director of the Tonic. http://the-tonic.blogspot.com Read Full Story