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FEATURE


SUPPORTING STAFF According to research by the Corporate Leadership Council, emotional commitment has by far the greatest impact on people’s willingness to go the extra mile, rather than the more logical rational reasons. At DS Smith, one of our company values is to be caring and, while we have always been a caring organisation, it is only more recently that health and wellbeing have really come to the fore. We’ve introduced a number of initiatives to


try and encourage our staff to take a break from their work and to eat more healthily, including free fruit Fridays, making sure that there are healthy food choices in the canteens at our sites and introducing a policy where no one can eat lunch at their desk.


We have also enrolled all 30 of our sites across the UK into Heart Research UK’s ‘Health Heart Mark’ award programme, which gives our employees the opportunity to have their blood pressure, cholesterol levels, BMI and waist measurements checked – something that is in addition to the annual, more detailed health check days we run. In the same way that we pride ourselves on being flexible to meet our customers’ needs, we have also supported employees to introduce their own wellbeing schemes at site level, to encourage healthier lifestyles. What I find most exciting about this is how different sites have started initiatives to suit their needs – and we now have everything from walking, running and cycling clubs, to woodland walks, allotments and football teams.


While you cannot preach to people and it is ultimately up to individuals to decide if they want to get involved, we have found this to be the most successful employee engagement programme that we have ever run.


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LEADING BY EXAMPLE The senior management team at DS Smith strives to lead by example too. Earlier this year, I led a team of colleagues in a charity challenge where we travelled from our European head office in Brussels to our group head office in London by bike, kayak and foot, raising money for Cancer Research and Heart Research UK in the process. We covered 289 miles and staff from across all of our sites took part in a Step-a-thon to match the distances we were covering, something that we plan to make an annual challenge.


However, not every senior manager needs to embark on quite such an epic challenge to inspire their employees. I don’t eat at my desk and always try to get out for a walk at lunchtime and hope that staff see me doing this and follow suit. Just doing one healthy action each week is a start but, I believe, the reason this has been so successful is because the senior management team at DS Smith has fully bought into the health and wellbeing programmes that we are running, while crucially - and in keeping with our overarching employee engagement strapline OWN IT! - staff have then been empowered to roll out the programme in the way that is most beneficial to them. Everyone knows this is not a fad, it’s not something we will stop tomorrow; it’s part of our DNA.


Introducing preventative health and wellbeing programmes fosters a broader culture of support and community, as well as boosting productivity, attendance and engagement, which is essential for a business to be successful and it baffles me that this is ignored. I would urge any team of senior managers who, as part of budget discussions, might be considering cutting ‘health in the workplace’ programmes to think again. I’m sure their health and safety teams team would echo my sentiment. Invest in health or your organisation risks paying the price further down the line.


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