What is the Healthy Workplace Project?
The Healthy Workplace Project is an innovative wellness programme designed to help employers reduce short term unplanned absences by reducing the spread of germs in the office.
How is this done?
By encouraging your employees to follow a simple hand-hygiene ritual of ‘wash, wipe, sanitize’
Get your workplace healthy in 2 easy steps:
1. Have your workplace site assessed
Get your whole working environment, from reception desks to individual workstations, assessed to see where the ‘germ hot spots’ are. We typically refer to this as an employee’s germ journey, i.e. from the parking lot to your desk. We assess all the areas where you are most vulnerable to germ transfer. This can include the reception door, stair railings, lift buttons and office/boardroom doors.
2. Install the right solution
Because only 85% of people wash their hands after using the bathroom, (75% of men and 93% of women), we know that germs aren’t fought in the bathroom! The programme makes it easier to fight germs where employees actually spread them – where they work! So our solutions are designed for:
- The bathroom, such as paper towels and hand cleanser (soap); and
- Outside the bathroom, hand sanitisers, hand and surface wipes.
All these encourage the wash, wipe, sanitise behaviour we want to see employees adopting.
This two-step process is very easy to implement, and is designed to create a more hygiene-conscious, motivated and engaged workforce. Says Nthato Malope, end-user Marketing Manager at Kimberly Clark Professional South Africa, “Helping companies reduce short-term, unplanned absenteeism from minor illnesses such as stomach bugs, colds and flu, by reducing the risk of germ transfer and actively engaging their employees and rewarding good healthy workplace habits at the same time, is a great way to ensure that we continue on our mission to help our customers create ‘exceptional workplaces’.”
FNB banks on the health and wellness of its employees
Banking giant First National Bank (FNB) is the latest high-profile corporation to ensure the improved health and wellness of its employees by adopting the Kimberly-Clark Professional Healthy Workplace Project.
Head of Employee Engagement at FNB, Eloise Boezak, points out that employee wellness is an integral part of business success. "We are constantly looking to innovate in every part of our business, including our people, and it became clear through our research that we had to create greater awareness around hygiene and basic issues related to the work environment."
Boezak notes that through this project, the bank aims to achieve not only an improved awareness around basic health in the work environment, but also a reduction in absenteeism from common diseases such as colds, flu and other communicable viruses. "We also want our employees to see the company they work for differently, and understand how important their health and contribution is to the overall business," she continues.
Looking to the future, FNB plans to roll out the project across the entire group in stages. "We are starting with our biggest precinct, which is FNB Bank City in the Johannesburg CBD. From there, we plan to roll the initiative out across Gauteng, before implementing it across our entire network of branches in South Africa."
Boezak believes that the implementation of The Healthy Workplace Project* will not only benefit FNB employees, but also its thousands of clients. "FNB has a strong focus on customer services, and creating a healthier workplace allows us to further ensure that our employees are at their optimum best to serve our clients. When a query is lodged or a certain service needs to be performed, it often requires a chain of FNB people to serve the client; from the person at the front desk that initially assists the client, to various internal staff in different departments, before ultimately coming back around to the client. We therefore need to ensure that our people are as healthy as possible, and able to perform at the levels of service and dedication that our clients have come to expect from us.”
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Lia Marus is the editor of HR Pulse. She has a BA in French, Italian and Linguistics from UCT, an MA in translation from Wits and a Postgraduate Diploma in Management from the Wits Business School. She is currently studying towards her LLB through Unisa. Lia started her career off in corporate communications, where she worked as a sub-editor, researcher and marketing coordinator. She then heeded the call of the publishing world and went into the business-to-business publishing field. She worked as a sub-editor as well as a chief sub-editor. Before joining ITWeb, she managed an HR guidebook at a leading international publishing company. |
