The purpose of our new fall initiative, His & Her Health, is to provide information on healthy eating, staying active, and maintaining vitality throughout life. It focuses on the importance of early screening and prevention strategies to help prevent chronic diseases and improve a person’s overall quality of life. 

Planning a theme-related event is a great way to let employees know about upcoming activities, contests, resources, and information available to them. Below are a variety of ideas that can be organized as stand alone events or integrated into upcoming at-work activities.

His & Her Health Fair

Organize a Health Fair at your workplace. Invite organizations to provide a display or handouts that introduce employees to the issues related to healthy eating, staying active, and maintaining vitality throughout life. Invite health professionals including Registered Dietitians, Public Health Nurses, physiotherapists, and certified ergonomists. Organizations could include your local Health Unit, Heart and Stroke Foundation, Canadian Mental Health Association, Canadian Diabetes Association, or the Canadian Lung Association.

Lunch and Learn

Host a presentation by a Registered Dietitian who works with the new Canada’s Food Guide or have a certified ergonomist speak about proper lifting techniques, workstation set-ups, and work habits. Other sessions can include losing weight, managing stress, physical activity, or quitting smoking.

Walk Across Canada

Encourage friendly competition in your workplace by organizing a “Walk Across Canada” or “Physical Activity Challenge”. Employees can compete individually or form teams to accumulate enough kilometres to travel across the city, region, or country. Teams can be made up of employees from different floors, departments, or other groups found in the workplace. To make it easier for participants to complete the challenge, use a formula to calculate how much distance each minute of exercise equals (e.g. 1 minute of activity = 2 kilometres). Team members must track the number of kilometres they cover, and group leaders gather and report the total distance for the team. Set a reasonable time limit for the challenge (e.g. 2 weeks to 2 months). Provide individual participants or team captains with a list of rules/guidelines that help to define the types of physical activity that can be included in the contest. Alternatively, a pedometer can be used to count the number of steps taken by each participant. This can encourage employees to include walking in their day, which is a great part of an active lifestyle.

Post a large map for the teams to see and mark the kilometres or steps as they are completed each week.  Participants can be physically active during their breaks or after work. The team that has travelled the furthest distance at the end of the challenge will be the winner. 

Healthy Meeting Policy

Establish a healthy eating policy for your workplace that not only addresses the foods offered in vending machines and cafeterias, but also at workshops and meetings. Include tips or guidelines for choosing healthier foods for meeting meals and breaks. This includes smaller portion sizes, vegetable and fruit trays, lower fat muffins and mini bagels, yogurt, water, and 100% juice.

Healthy Weight Loss Challenge

Offer a healthy weight loss program with a twist. This activity is best done in an environment where a large freight scale is available. The freight scale is useful in any weight-control activity involving teams or departments. At a scheduled time, such as break or lunch, gather teams at the freight scale. Have one team or department step on the scale together. Competing teams or departments see the weight of the entire group. Repeat with all teams.

This activity is one way of incorporating everyone into a fun event. Even those who don’t need to lose weight can support those who do by maintaining their weight. Participants who would benefit from losing a few pounds, but are not sufficiently motivated to do it on their own can contribute to the group effort. The fact that other teams witness the weigh-in adds to the sense of commitment to the group goal. Be careful to structure the event to foster healthy weight loss (no more than 1-2 lbs or 1 kg per person per week) rather than a competitive frenzy that could lead to rapid or too much weight loss by highly competitive individuals. One way to do this is to reward the team that is closest to their group goal rather than the team that loses the most weight.

Online Treasure Hunt Challenge

Set up a Treasure Hunt Challenge over the Internet. Select key health websites and choose various words, phrases, sentences, and facts from their site for employees to locate. Create a list of clues that will lead them from one site to another. This is a great way to encourage staff to become familiar with websites that are related to the initiative.

Keep Your Muscles In Motion

Sitting in one place for long periods of time (i.e. computer station) may cause stress and tension in the upper neck and lower back.  Encourage employees to take the time to stretch by distributing copies of the posters, “Stretching for the Active Workplace” and “Stretching for the Office Workplace”.  These posters include a series of stretches that can be downloaded from: www.wechealthunit.org/workplace-health/initiatives/posters/.

Cafeteria Promotions

Offer healthier selections in vending machines and workplace cafeterias. There is a strong link between a healthy eating pattern and reduced risk for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity. For sandwiches, have low fat mayonnaise and cheese available, as well as whole grain breads. Offer plenty of vegetables and fruit, whole and cut up as options. Replace less healthy, higher fat snacks in the vending machine with trail mix, baked chips, pretzels, canned fruit, and lower fat muffins. For more ideas visit http://www.wechealthunit.org/workplace-health/initiatives/eating-well-your-way and look for policy suggestions and environmental supports.

Screening Clinics

Organize a screening clinic for your employees. These screenings could include blood pressure, blood sugar, body mass index, and cholesterol values measured by qualified health care providers. See the Community Resources information sheet for local agencies that provide this service or contact Kevin Morse at 519-258-2146 ext. 3110.

Start a Walking Group

Start a walking group to encourage employees to walk during breaks or on their own time. 

The Windsor-Essex County Health Unit has a Windsor-Essex Walks at Work Resource kit that provides helpful information for starting and participating in a workplace-walking club. It contains a manual for both the team leader and walking participants.  There is also a full colour poster to display at your workplace to help recruit participants. To obtain copies of this resource, please call 519-258-2146 ext. 3100, or download the file from the Health Unit website at http://www.wechealthunit.org/workplace-health/workplace-walking-program/windsor-essex-walks-at-work-resource-kit