What we’ve learned about workplace well-being from the British Heart Foundation

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Jul 10, 2019/ Off Comments / in British Heart Foundation, General News, Uncategorised / by
What we’ve learned about workplace well-being from the British Heart Foundation

We love the British Heart Foundation (BHF) because the charity isn’t just focused on how much we can raise for them; they are also keen to give back, and one of the ways they do this is promoting workplace well-being for companies and organisations.

As a team, we agreed it was a great idea to learn as much as we could and invited the BHF to come in and give us some hands-on advice and guidance to look after our hearts – especially as SR Timber can often be a hectic place, which you would expect from a leading importer of timber products and the UK’s largest importer of roofing batten, including our flagship Premium Gold.

The Heart Health session covered some of the risk factors that increase the likelihood of getting cardiovascular disease, such as smoking, high blood pressure, high blood cholesterol, physical inactivity, being overweight or obese, having diabetes or having a family history of coronary heart disease or stroke.

It also covered some of the symptoms of a heart attack, such as pain or discomfort in the chest that doesn’t go away (with the pain then spreading to the left or right arm or even to the neck and jaw), feeling sick and having a shortness of breath.

Annie the BHF dummy

Derek from the BHF brought Annie the dummy with him and, as part of the Heart Health session, we had a demonstration of CPR. That was because there are more than 30,000 cardiac arrests outside of hospital every year, but the survival rate is less than 1 in 10 – and the BHF is on a mission to increase survival rates by creating a nation of lifesavers!

Seeing the demonstration of CPR on Annie was a sobering experience, but we realised that cardiac arrests can happen to anyone at any time – often when there’s no warning of susceptibility. And the BHF put it into even more context by telling us that in the East Midlands (where we’re based), around 19,249 people devastatingly lose their lives to conditions including heart disease, stroke and heart failure every year.

So what did we learn?

The BHF focused heavily on prevention and the little things we can all do to look after our hearts.

Let’s be honest at this point: it’s all the stuff we know we should be doing or be aware of, whether we’re at work, at home or out and about. They can often be uncomfortable truths for us all, with risk factors including:

  • High cholesterol
  • High blood pressure
  • Diabetes
  • High weight
  • Family history
  • Smoking

The BHF has lots of information and resources available on its website. On the topic of maintaining a healthy weight or losing weight, its advice is simple: eating well and being physically active make a huge difference.

They’ve thought of everything and have even put together a series of chair-based exercises that everyone who works in an office environment can do when we’re sitting at our desks.

Office chair exercises are a start, but our team will have to step it up if they’re going to climb mountains and run marathons as part of our summer of fundraising!

Keep checking our charity page to keep up to date on our fundraising, or follow us on Twitter @SR_Timber_ for news as it happens. And if you want to support us, please visit our Just Giving page.