Become a 'Healthy Workplace' with support from Swansea City Foundation

Swansea City AFC Foundation is offering support to local businesses to help them become a ‘Healthy Workplace’ through a tailored programme.

‘Healthy Workplaces’ is one strand of the Foundation's expansion of the FIT Jacks initiative, in an effort to reach out into the community to make it easier for more people to access health and wellbeing programmes.

Through these sessions, the Foundation’s health and wellbeing team work alongside local businesses to create bespoke offerings, encouraging staff to be healthier in and out of the workplace.

Foundation health and wellbeing officer Rhys Davies has led the project, and believes it is important for businesses to support the physical and mental health of their employees.

“It’s crucial for workplaces to be as active as they can,” said Davies.

“It improves employees physical and mental health, it can make them more productive at work and we’ve found that it helps to bring people together.

“We try to make programmes that are bespoke and based on the needs of the employees that will best improve their health and wellbeing.”

Dawsons Estate Agents were the first business to join the programme, creating a step challenge that encouraged their staff to be more active, and brought them together within their teams.

Since starting the challenge, participants covered almost 14,000 miles, taking 27 million steps across that time.

And Dawson’s Naomi Webborn was delighted with the positive impact on their staff, having herself initially taken part in the original roll-out of the FIT Jacks programme.

“I started doing FIT Jacks which was amazing for me personally, so speaking with the Foundation we wanted to bring something that would help the staff at Dawsons,” said Webborn.

“It’s had a really positive impact, a lot of the staff weren’t taking lunch breaks, but now they are taking breaks and going for walks. Many of them are going after work, as well.

“They’re all very competitive by nature, so having the leaderboard and competition side of the challenge has been a draw for our staff.” 

Lowri Williams has been among those taking part in the challenge, and revealed how staff had embraced the competitive nature of the challenge in their day-to-day work patterns.

“We’re walking to appointments instead of driving, or parking that little bit further away just to get steps in,” said Williams.

“We’ve all been working hard together and we’ve all been motivating each other to try and achieve as many steps as possible.”

If your business is interested in getting involved in the 'Healthy Workplaces' initiative, fill out the interest form below.