Are you as a business owner or entrepreneur simply too busy to prioritise your personal health and well-being?
We recently conducted a Corporate Wellness Day activation in Johannesburg with the tenants from The Business Exchange in Rosebank and one of the interesting factors which came up was that many people opted to join remotely rather than in-person.
Across 2 different presentations, we offered delegates the opportunity to come and learn more about diet / healthy eating with Rachel and then the chance to hear from Kelsey around the importance of physical movement for the busy professional.
We were surprised that many people opted to join the sessions online rather than face-to-face and we decided to dig into this a bit further. While COVID-19 remains a concern for some people, the vast majority of the people we spoke to indicated that they preferred to join online simply because they were too busy to take a break in their daily routine to come and join face-to-face – they needed to be able to multi-task and constantly be connected to e-mail.
We get it – Gauteng / Johannesburg is the home of “hustle” and taking a break to prioritise your health is secondary – particularly as we are emerging from the economic issues related to COVID-19 …. but does it really mean you have to be so busy that you can’t look after yourself?
Here’s something to think about … according to data out of The Heart Foundation, every hour at least 5 people have a heart attack and 10 South Africans will have a stroke.
Each year, 78000 people in South Africa die from heart disease and much of this is driven by unhealthy and stressful lifestyles.
The team from Pharma Dynamics actually researched some interesting statistics from ER24 which looked at the number of times that they were called out to deal with heart attack related issues.
There was a telling quote from the report:
“Residents in the majority of these areas are among the least likely to exercise regularly and smoking rates also tend to be high, which further heightens their risk of heart disease. Poor diet is also commonly associated with heart conditions. Unfortunately, the demands of a fast-paced urban lifestyle doesn’t leave much room for nutritional meal planning and it’s increasingly putting people into contact with fast-food, which often carries a high fat, sugar and salt content,”
There are over 200 million (!) search results on the phrase “Too busy to be healthy” and it is important to step back and try and understand why you as an entrepreneur, business owner or work professional actually need to switch off for a few hours a day.
It’s a proven fact that stressed out employees will be prone to mistakes, absenteeism, presenteeism, workplace conflict and even fraud – employees simply don’t have the chance to switch off.
If this sounds like your organisation then ask yourself some of these questions and decide whether it makes sense to try and plaster over issues down the line, or actively enforce employees and team members actually taking a break:
- What would happen if you lost a key team member to a heart attack?
- Could your business continue if the CEO was out of action for a few months with a health-related issue?
- How many times are your team having to repeat tasks because they made mistakes (Budgeting? Proposals? Content Development?)
- Are your team members spending more time clashing or debating workplace issues than focused on their day-to-day tasks?
- What would it cost you if a financial-stressed employee defrauded your business?
None of these are matters that businesses want to think about, but the reality is that these are real challenges that many organisations face every day and the root cause for many of these issues …. staff members are too busy to look after their health.
We would love to work with your team and help them un-plug and come back happier, healthier, more productive, creative and ready to contribute to your bottom line.
If you would like to discuss a Wellness solution for your business, please do not hesitate to contact us.
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