By Rachel Preece, Health and Fitness Consultant at Capgemini
As the Health and Fitness Consultant for Capgemini, my role is about attracting and retaining our employees by ensuring that they have the right environment in which to enhance their health and wellbeing.
Capgemini have invested in their employee’s health and wellbeing by supporting and regenerating the gym area creating three workspaces for employees to improve their fitness, giving employees a place to rehabilitate themselves from injury or ill-health and a gym to network and improve their sense of community at work.
To help improve physical health, employees have access to an extensive gym, studio and pace room area (which is a circuit room with kinetic kit that operates with a traffic light to guide you round). In the outdoor spaces we run a TurfUOut gardening club. Capgemini is a Gold Corporate Member with Shropshire Wildlife Trust so we are able to enhance our green spaces with bug houses, allotments (the food grown is donated to the local food banks in Telford and Dawley), butterfly beds and even a Pride rainbow flower bed.
The gym hosts a range of classes that are available for employees to access. These classes include yoga, weight training classes, meditation and mindfulness, fascial stretch classes to improve mobility and decrease pain for those suffering with impaired mobility and more lively FIT classes (focused interval training), and Move It classes which are a slightly gentler version of the FIT – although I’m not sure the attendees of Move It would call it gentle!
The gym has been well established for many years at Capgemini and 36% of the workforce has a currently active membership. This is a great achievement for our health and wellbeing objectives at Capgemini as gym membership in the West Midlands in general is 10.5%.
Looking at ways we can support and enhance good mental health at work is a focus for Capgemini. We signed the Time to Change pledge two years ago and introduced Mental Health Champions across all our sites in Telford and the UK. We also work closely with Telford Mind and have invited them to create a bespoke training certification for our Champions.
During May’s Mental Health Awareness Week, we opted for a month of events for employees to take part in. Some of the topics covered were Menopause Cafés, TED Talks, anxiety awareness sessions expertly led by Telford Mind, litter picks and drop-in sessions for stress management, cancer awareness and TurfUOut gardening sessions.
In October we invited men to stand shoulder to shoulder raising awareness of the number of men who take their lives each week in the UK. We know men are less likely to reach out for support and so we run campaigns like this to make it easier for those who need to talk to do so. Over 120 men joined in and we also highlighted the excellent Zero Suicide Alliance training.
Capgemini encourages volunteering and this week we have 30 employees visiting Wrekin Housing Trust and Telford Job Junctions. Our volunteers will work with local elderly residents to improve their digital experiences and for those who have been out of work for a time and need some confidence in writing their CVs and then loading them to various online portals.
The driver for all of these events and activities is to attract and retain our employees by creating these opportunities at work for the work-life balance that so many people struggle to find.
Become an active workplace
There is help available to employers to help create a happier, healthier workplace. Energize Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin run workshops for businesses who feel they need confidence and inspiration to make changes in the workplace.
These workshops equip businesses with knowledge around why health and wellbeing is important, how to create an active workplace, the key challenges for businesses face, and the barriers employees face when trying to improve health and wellbeing at work.