17/03/2020
The Global Wellness Institute defines wellness as the active pursuit of activities, choices and lifestyles that lead to a state of holistic health.
While emphasis has always been on the need for employees to be healthy, with Wellness comes a continuum which encourages employees to adopt attitudes and lifestyles that prevent disease, improve health, and enhance their quality of life and sense of wellbeing.
Leaders at various levels in organisations occassionally joke or gloss over the challenges of road traffic in our dear city of Lagos, and how their people have to wake up as early as 3 am every morning so as to get to work early, and beat the 4 to 5 hours of traffic congestion everyday.
It is no wonder that the Life Expectancy of Nigerians in 2019 was about 54 years! Arguably, it would be a lot shorter for Lagosians!
In other words, an average Nigerian who goes to the university and completes his first degree, Is likely to only live 30 more years after graduation!
Or 25 more years after getting married/getting a well paying job!
Also, the increasing cases of su***de, even among active workers in Africa, is a pointer to the fact that this malaise is not, or at least, no longer a ‘Western thing’, and hopefully we do not begin to see cases of disgruntled/sick workers attacking fellow workers with the intention of causing serious bodily harm.
With forces such as technological revolutions; changing demographics and the need for talent management; client sophistication & individual choice and the desire to express our individuality no matter whose ox is gored; driving changes in the workforce around the world, the need for workplace wellness conversations to be moved to actionable steps, for the benefit of employees, organizations and society in general, cannot be overemphasized.
