Policy and Programme
Programme Overview
WHP activities focus on physical activity, healthy eating, stress/anxiety management and stopping smoking to encourage health behaviour change.
All employees are encouraged to make the right choices for a healthy lifestyle, through active participation and ownership of health promotion programmes. Employees are also granted time off for various in-house health-related activities, such as health talks, fitness tests, healthy mind surveys, health screenings, healthy food competition and many others.
Physical activity
Management organizes brisk walking activities three evenings a week at the Yishun neighbourhood park and sports such as line dancing, swimming, aerobics, tai-chi and bowling competitions. Talks are given on how to prevent injury during exercise. Employees are provided with corporate gym cards, which they can use at sports centres across Singapore. Posters to encourage physical activity are displayed on notice boards.
During the ACTIVE Day exercise, all employees are granted time off to participate in a brisk walk/jogging exercise at the Yishun Neighbourhood Park, followed by a healthy fruit breakfast.
Healthy eating
To support the Healthier Food Declaration pledged in 2003, a Healthy Catering policy was set to improve the quality of food served at the cafeteria, meetings and events.
The WHP committee works closely with the cafeteria operator on healthy cooking – to reduce salt, sugar and oil while increasing the variety of vegetables and fruits. The company provides fruits and vegetables free on Mondays, along with related health information. Healthy eating posters are displayed at the cafeteria and notice boards.
Talks on healthy eating, campaigns and healthy cooking competitions are held regularly. Vendors of healthy food are invited to sell their products at the cafeteria. During the annual “Healthy Eating Month”, employees are provided with fruits and healthy desserts.
Targeted interventions are provided for individuals who are at high risk from lifestyle-related diseases. A weight and cholesterol management programme, managed by an external agency, was organized for a group of employees with undesirable BMI (body mass index) and blood cholesterol.
Health screening
There are regular health assessments. Every two months, employees have their weight taken (for the BMI measurement) while blood cholesterol, blood glucose, blood pressure and fitness is tested annually. The company organizes in-house health screening by the National Kidney Foundation for all employees every year. These assessments are additional to the formal comprehensive health screening programme (frequency by age) that is part of employees’ employment benefits. To encourage employees to have more frequent health screening, the company allows reimbursement for health screening at private clinics under the flexible benefit scheme.
Stopping smoking
To help the 5% of the workforce who smoke, company doctors are available to any employee who wishes to stop smoking. The WHP committee organizes anti-smoking talks, displays posters to encourage smokers to quit and publicizes the Health Promotion Board’s QuitLine at the designated smoking area and the notice boards.
The company has a No Smoking policy to strongly discourage smokers by designating only one smoking area, which is outside the building.
This provides a smoke-free, clean and healthy environment for all employees and visitors. The cafeteria caterer is not allowed to sell cigarettes within the company premises. Employees who are caught smoking in “no smoking” company premises are subject to disciplinary actions of increasing severity, including dismissal, as described in the smoking and disciplinary action policies.
Mental health
“Healthy mind” surveys are conducted half-yearly to measure the organizational stress/anxiety/depression level of all employees. Followups are made for those employees with undesirable levels to ensure that appropriate assistance is given to them. Talks on stress management, yoga and flower arranging classes, arts and crafts and educational tours are organized.
A supportive family environment is encouraged through activities involving family members, for example, celebrating the mid-autumn festival with a lantern-making competition or outings for families. Employee opinion surveys measure satisfaction levels in the workplace: higher satisfaction levels result in lower levels of work stress.
Social and spiritual health
The WHP programme also includes a volunteer initiative to encourage employees’ social and spiritual health. A long-term partnership is being developed with a local home for the elderly, with whom BD employees organize meetings, DIY projects, food fair and entertainments. This helps employees make contributions to society – and helps towards BD’s purpose of “helping all people live healthy lives”.
Performance indicator: the Fitness Index
The company’s Fitness Index is a composite index to measure employees’ body mass index, blood cholesterol, physical fitness and stress/anxiety levels.
The Index is the key performance indicator for the WHP. Along with other business performance indices, it is a key business objective in corporate five-year Improvement plans. The Index is also linked to team-based variable bonus payments.
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Goals for 2010 are to:
• Reduce the incidence of obesity
• Reduce the high blood cholesterol problem
• Increase the percentage of employees achieving an award in the Sports for Life Walk
• Reduce stress
Programme design
BD Singapore conducted a needs assessment to establish baseline data for planning, prioritizing health-related issues, setting objectives and obtaining initial feedback from employees on their needs in order to plan a coherent and focused programme.
The WHP programme began in 2004, designed specifically for BD’s Yishun plant. A needs assessment established baseline data for planning, prioritized health-related issues, set objectives and obtained initial feedback from employees on their needs. The data sources used included:
- Basic health screening of employees by the National Kidney Foundation on a yearly basis. Tests include blood pressure/glucose/cholesterol, body fats analysis and height and weight/body mass index measurement
- Fitness assessment: an annual Sports for Life walk/run, to assess employees’ fitness status.
- Health practices survey from the Health Promotion Board
- Healthy Mind Survey by the Institute of Mental Health to assess organizational stress/anxiety/depression levels
- Interests survey to identify employees’ preferred activities, and timing
- Employee satisfaction survey every two years to assess employees satisfaction and morale
- Employee demographics (age, gender, race, marital status, educational level, etc.) from the human resources department
- Organizational data: such as medical costs, absenteeism, employee turnover, group hospital and surgical insurance premium.
Targeted interventions are provided for individuals who are at high risk for lifestyle-related diseases
One such example is from the health screening exercise. A follow-up cholesterol test by the company’s doctor was conducted for those employees with undesirable high blood cholesterol a few months later, as the results showed that there were 25 employees with both BMI category 25 to 29.9 or >=30 and blood cholesterol at borderline or high levels. A weight and cholesterol management programme managed by an external agency was specially organized for this group of targeted employees; 21 of them volunteered to join and are still in this programme.
The support from the Singapore government in promoting workplace health has facilitated BD’s WHP programme.
Since the establishment of the Singapore Health Promotion Board in 2001, the Ministry of Health and other institutes, such as the Singapore Sports Council, have been proactively targeting various sectors with carefully planned intervention programmes. The government also provides reference resources to guide organizations on the planning of health intervention programmes as well as help to defray the cost of setting up such programmes through the provision of workplace health grants.
Programme Implementation
The company adopted an eight-step implementation strategy for its WHP programme.
1. Establish a sense of urgency
The leadership team saw the programme as a means to highlight the well-being of the plant workforce – well aware of the dangers of not doing so. WHP benefits, such as reduced medical costs, insurance premiums and absenteeism, impact positively on the bottom line.
2. Form a powerful guiding coalition
The Sports & Recreation Committee was reformed into the Health and Wellness Club (HWC), a cross-functional team with members selected for their positive approach to health and wellness. The WHP programme is championed by senior management and facilitated by the Plant Manager.
3. Create a vision
The Health and Wellness club developed a vision to improve the health and well-being of employees, with measurable targets. This vision is reviewed constantly for its relevance and in 2007 it expanded the definition of health from just physical and emotional to one that embraces holistic health with five dimensions – intellectual, social and spiritual, in addition to physical and emotional health.
4. Communicate the vision
This vision is communicated to all employees through formal and informal channels. Formal communication channels include leadership briefings, postings on bulletin board, emails, etc. Informal channels include “sharing” sessions by those who have benefited from the WHP programmes rolled out by the Health and Wellness Club.
5. Empower others
The leadership team empowered the HWC to roll out the programmes, and helped overcome obstacles such as time restrictions by giving employees time off for activities.
6. Plan/create “short-term wins”
A points collection card was introduced. Employees earn stamps for each of their HWC activities. Stamps can be exchanged for simple tokens and gifts.
7. Consolidate improvements
The plant soon saw improvements in employees’ health metrics, which increased the programme’s credibility. These improvements are reinvigorated through constant review.
8. Institutionalize new approaches
The improved health metrics are articulated as a corporate success – through reduced health expenses and reduced absenteeism. WHP results are periodically reviewed and new targets set for each fiscal year. The WHP programme experience is being shared through BD’s “best practice” channels and via the BD intranet. It has also been shared in the National Conference on WHP, hosted by the Singapore Health Promotion Board in 2006.
Programme communication
BD’s communication strategy is to “over-communicate from all directions” with a mass or smaller group approach adopted.
- Top-to-bottom communication shows the leadership team’s support for the programme, in a visibly hands-on fashion. Senior managers champion, support and take part in the WHP programmes and share their personal lifestyle experiences with colleagues.
- Bottom-to-top communication secures feedback from employees, which feeds into ongoing WHP management processes.
- Side-to-side communication lets employees and members of the Health and Wellness Club share experiences with their co-workers. There is also a “buddy” system to help co-workers reach their targeted weight or cholesterol levels.
Management teams are educated on the financial impact of a healthy vs unhealthy workforce.
This picture is depicted through figures of absenteeism as well as medical costs of an unhealthy workforce. Much discussion was extrapolated from the sharing of these figures, for example, absenteeism of the production operators can be calculated into financial dollars by calculating the opportunity costs of not meeting our production schedules on time, hence the potential dollar impact of backorders
Employees are educated on the various types of chronic diseases and related risk factors, followed by examples of the actual cost of a treatment of those diseases.
Health and nutrition specialists educate employees about the various types of chronic diseases and the risk factors associated with them. Employees are then shown examples of the actual costs of medical treatment. Most employees are assigned individual impact goals, derived from corporate business goals, which can be used to measure the “individual health impact” on business success.
Programme Participation
BD provides an update on the progress of the WHP programme at the plant’s monthly Key Objectives meeting, monthly Health and Wellness Club meeting and the quarterly Workforce/Workplace meeting BD has observed an increasing trend in the participation in its WHP activities:
| |
2005 |
2006 |
2007 |
| Health Screening |
84.2% |
90.1% |
89.6% |
| Mass physical activity or exercise event |
93.3% |
93.5% |
N/A |
| Fitness Assessment – Sports for Life Walk |
71.0% |
84.6% |
90.2% |
| Health Talk |
92.1% |
94.0% |
N/A |
Financial incentive schemes and dedicated professionals are helpful to optimize participation.
The company uses an incentive scheme where associates are awarded with stamps for their participation in the WHP activities. The number of stamps awarded increases in proportion to the value of the desired behaviour. These stamps are used to redeem the gifts they prefer. In addition, rewards such as trophies and cash are given out to the winners of the WHP-related contests and competitions
The plant manager is the sponsor and the HR manager is the adviser to the WHP committee. The chairman, successor of the HR manager, oversees the WHP committee. The WHP committee plans, implements and evaluates programmes and strategies that support the WHP programme.
Programme Measurement
With the implementation of the WHP programme, BD Singapore has seen positive trends and results in health indicators, financial outcome, productivity and corporate image.
Health:
• The average Fitness Index score improved from a baseline of 25% in 2004 to 75% in 2005 and 81% in 2006 and 2007.
• The percentage of employees with undesirable to borderline blood cholesterol has reduced from 46% in 2004 to 30% in 2005 and 29% in 2006.
Financial:
• Average medical cost per employee was reduced by 30% from 2003 to 2006, from S$ 218 to S$ 153.
Productivity:
• Absenteeism rates reduced by 20% from 2003 to 2006. Average sick leave dropped from 5.5 days (per associate/year) in 2003 to 4.4 days in 2006.
• Employee turnover rates reduced from 5.9% in 2004 to 4.5% in 2007 (compared with the national average of 17.7% for the manufacturing industry).
Corporate image:
• Singapore HEALTH (Helping Employees Achieve Life-Time Health) Award – Gold Award – 2005 and 2006.
• Singapore HEALTH Leader Excellence Award – 2006.
• Singapore HEALTH Promoter Award – 2006.
• Singapore Ministry of Manpower Annual Safety and Health Performance Award (ASHPA).Gold Award – 2005, 2006, 2007.
• Work-Life Achiever Award – 2006. |
