Tasmania’s Glenorchy City Council is holding education and fitness programs to promote a healthy and active lifestyle for staff. Project: Healthy Worker is designed to educate employees on health and wellbeing issues and support them to improve their overall wellbeing.
Programs have been developed to be accessible to all employees. Initiatives are flexible enough to provide options for all staff, with minimal disruption to their daily duties.
Workplace Health and Safety Officer, Barry Jackman, said Council’s Administration Safety Committee initiated the program.
“After consulting with staff, the committee decided that staff needed to be informed about a healthy diet, how to exercise and what stretching they should do,” he said. “We recruited Ricky Langford, an exercise physiologist with a specialty in injury management and an interest in work health promotion, to design a program to achieve this.”
Ricky Langford is a physiologist, strength conditioning and high performance consultant to the Australian Cricket team, Tassie Tigers and Tassie Devils.
“Monthly sessions run for an hour and a half and combine both education on what we should be doing and why, followed by physical activities showing us how to do it,” Barry Jackman said. “For example, a recent education session was based on diet and metabolic typing. Participants were then asked to check their metabolic typing as part of a homework task.”
Risk Management Coordinator, Stuart Lovell, said all staff are encouraged to participate in the programs, although it is not a compulsory activity.
“Of almost 100 internal staff, we have had approximately 40 staff members attend the sessions,” he said.
The program took out the Policy for Structural Change Award at the 2005 Heart Foundation Kellogg Local Government Awards, Tasmania and was a finalist in the national awards, Policy for Healthy Communities category.
For further information contact Stuart Lovell, Glenorchy’s Risk Management Coordinator, on (03) 6216 6759.
