We all assume it, but science has finally proven it.

A recent Australian study has qualified the health affects for children who spend too much time in front of television and computers. Children who are spending more than two hours per day in front of either the television or a computer have been shown to be significantly less fit. Additionally, they also found this couch potato approach more severely affected girls than boys.

So no longer do the mums and dads of Australia have to tell the kids that sitting in front of television is lazy, they can now tell them that they will be less fit as a result.

You would think that the current tough financial times means that people are willing to work harder given there are less jobs. However several recent surveys have indicated that in these tough financial times people are putting a greater priority on family time. A recent survey in America highlighted that 86% of full-time workers plan to find a better balance between work and their personal lives.

Interestingly, it was the younger workers who were more likely to believe that having a good worklife balance is a priority.

While they are all good intentions, it is obviously a difficult goal to achieve. Most organisations are pushing their staff to work longer hours and meet more deadlines, especially as the economy starts to slow. Long gone are the standard eight-hour workdays. Now we have much longer days at work coupled with taking work home, checking our e-mails at home, and being contactable anywhere anytime on our mobile phones.

While this may result in us getting through a high-volume work, it may have some dire personal consequences and additionally it may not even be what is best to the employer. Long work hours are fatiguing and put the employees health at risk, as well as reducing the time they spend with their family. This means they are less likely to continue living this lifestyle and may ultimately leave the organisation for a position elsewhere that allows them to more evenly prioritise their life.

So my advice is to assist your staff to maintain their health, work life balance and family time. A workplace health and wellness program is an ideal way of assisting your employees during these tough economic times. Not only will it assist them, but it will also assist you.

Many staff at FitSense Australia have a long history of working with elite athletes. This includes Olympians right through to professional football players. Back in 2004 our staff started to apply some of their skills in the corporate environment through our work with the Australian Customs Service.

This work involved establishing fitness requirements for officers and then putting them through a regular battery of fitness tests to ensure they were fit for duty.

This approach to safety and duty of care is something that should be a high priority for all organisations. If staff are not physically capable of undertaking tasks related to their job function, then not only are they at greater risk of injury, but they are also putting their colleagues at risk.

Research has indicated that employees undertaking physical job roles are rarely stretched to their maximum physical ability. This has been highlighted in various articles relating to firefighters, which concluded that most firefighters were only pushed to their maximum physical ability approximately once per year. While this isn’t frequent, the potential consequence of these officers not being ready to undertake these maximal intensity tasks is severe as it may result in injury or even death (remembering the severe and often unsafe environment that many of these people work in).

So does this mean that everyone undertaking physical job roles needs to pass a mandatory fitness test? No. But what it does mean is that each job role needs to be assessed according to its demands in order to determine if a basic level of fitness is a requirement for the role.

Just remember, this is employee health and safety we’re talking about, and every organisation has a duty of care towards their employees.

In a previous post, I discussed how a smoking ban in a US city lowered the incidence of heart attacks. Research has shown that long term exposure to second hand smoke can raise the risk of heart disease in non-smokers by at least 25%.

Now closer to home and the ACT government is considering a plan to ban smoking in cars carrying children. This is already a law in several states in Australia and is definitely something that should be considered across all other states. Passive smoking in cars is a definite health risk, and unfortunately children do not have the option or control on whether they are exposed to this or not.

I hope this is something that is pushed through by the ACT government sooner rather than later, with other states to follow.

Being January 2009, we have recently looked back on what we have done over 2008 and what we could do better. One of the big positives out of 2008 was that over 99% of employees from our client’s organisations were satisfied with the FitSense program they undertook.

More importantly, these participants found our programs beneficial and educational, thus having a positive impact on their health and wellness.

Based on this we could say that 2008 was very successful as our clients were satisfied and our services for effective. However, what was even more important than the satisfaction rating we received from program participants was the overwhelming number of positive comments on surveys and feedback forms. Additionally, we received a large number of e-mails from program participants thanking us for our services and indicating what a big impact our services had made to their health.

Despite the positive feedback, we still feel that we can do better. We feel we can make our programs more enjoyable, more effective and offer a greater variety of services to suit individual needs of participants. This is an area of 2009 challenge. And most of all we want to ensure that the quality of our services remains high so every individual who participates in our programs get the time and care that they deserve.

Safeway in the US has introduced a new workplace wellness program for 2009 called Healthy Measures. The unique thing about this program is that it gives individual employees more control of their health dollars by putting a focus on prevention more than treatment. In the US many companies offer their employees health insurance as part of their work contracts, however several US companies now want to look at rewarding those staff who maintain good health, as this ultimately reduce health treatment costs.

In the Safeway program, employees will be financially rewarded if they can control their smoking, obesity, BP and cholesterol. The reason that these health parameters were chosen was because 70% of Safeway’s health-care costs were linked to these factors.

Additionally, the company is also offering employees access to a local fitness centre, as well as offering free or subsidised lunches at the company cafeteria which focuses on healthy and calorie controlled meals.

With all the talk of an economic slowdown, what does this actually mean to our health?

Well a recent study has indicated that potential economic hardship is making people look at their health as a lower priority. Take these examples from a recent survey whichfound that Americans over the age of 45 were:

• delaying seeing a doctor (22%);
• cutting back on preventative health care (16%);
• not filling doctor’s prescription (14%).

While women were no more likely than men to make these these poor health decisions, decisions were not isolated to lower income groups. The same trend was seen across all income groups.

So what exactly does this mean from a corporate wellness point of view? It means that employers need to put even greater emphasis on ensuring that their staff maintain good health over the coming year or two as the economy regains its feet.

Today FitSense released a new online seminar titled ‘Healthy Eating for a Healthy Life’.

We have gradually been releasing a series of online seminars as part of our improved online wellness services to corporate clients. The latest seminar is conducted by dietician Andrew McCormack and covers a range of nutritional topics such as weight management, reading food labels, in understanding what is in foods.

While we don’t ever feel that online wellness services will be as thorough or as effective as face-to-face services, they do offer options for individuals who would not otherwise have access to face-to-face services. This includes: employees who work in remote regional areas; employees undertaking shiftwork; or simply employees are so busy they find it difficult to make it to scheduled appointments.

If you are interested in any information on the FitSense’s online services then please contact us on 1300 88 58 40 or info@fitsense.com.au

We all know how tough it can be to exercise at times. It is something experienced by everybody, right up to those who exercise regularly. Recently when in Australia, Haile Gebrselassie, marathon world record holder and dual Olympic gold medallist, stated that most days he struggled to push himself out the door to train.

So with most of us having good intentions, motivation becomes one of the main differences between ‘going to’ and ‘doing’. This short questionnaire is available on the ABC website and might provide you with an insight into the way you think about exercise and what motivates you to get out the door.