Tag Archives: workplace health

Seville heatwave

Coping with a summer heatwave

I have spent more summers sweltering in a Seville heatwave than I can remember. Many of them as a student when air con was not an affordable option – and latterly, working through the baking heat of a southern Spanish summer. Thankfully with the benefit of in-house air conditioning.

Add to that a string of holiday trips to Ibiza staying when family lived on the island, and I feel well qualified to advise on coping with the most extreme summer conditions.

Andalucia – south west Spain – has long suffered summer heatwaves, but it is clear that climate change is magnifying the problem. Temperatures are rising earlier in the season and staying high for longer. Residents flee to the beach if they can. If you’re planning a summer trip to the heatwave zone, what coping measures can you take to beat the heat?

Read on for my tips on coping with a summer heatwave…

Tiles beat wood

When booking, if possible choose accommodation with chill ceramic tiled floors rather than wooden flooring, which retains and radiates heat. Spanish people traditionally use rugs rather than fitted carpets, rolling them out during the winter then stashing them away during the hotter summer months.

The temperature difference between one year when we rented an apartment in central Seville with tiled floors, and the following year when we had parquet underfoot, was immense.

Furnishings absorb heat, so think minimalistic if you are fitting out your own place.

Air con and ceiling fans

Air conditioning is a must-have. Temperatures regularly top 40 degC during the day in Seville in the summer, dropping to low to mid 20s at night – if you’re lucky. Without air con you will get nothing done and will find sleeping difficult.

Some rental agencies cap power costs, so in a seriously hot spell, be warned that you may be charged extra if you over-use the air conditioning. Always switch it off or turn it down low when you go out. See below for more tips on staying cool with minimal air con.

Ceiling fans in bedrooms are a genius way to reduce your reliance on the a/c unit. A sweep of moving air from a ceiling fan is surprisingly refreshing in a heatwave and will mean you can either turn the air con right down or switch it off completely at night. Good for your pocket and the environment.

Aim high

An apartment or room on a higher floor will catch more breeze, as will outside windows or balconies. In southern Spain, especially in cities like Seville, many properties are built to the traditional central patio layout. Access to external and internal airways gives access to a through breeze, helping suck cooler air into your living space at night when lower temperatures allow you to open windows. On which note…

Close and shutter windows during the day

Keep a close watch on the temperature and make sure you do not open windows until the heat drops outside (ie at night – and often not until very late at night). Equally, close all windows and shutters / curtains / blinds as soon as the sun comes round and it starts to feel warmer outside than in.

The aim is to keep the ambient interior temperature low. Hot sun shining on floors and furniture will turn your inside space into a radiator. Keep it out to prevent your living space from heating up and don’t open up until the external temperature feels equal to or cooler than the air indoors.

Swerve the stove

My Spanish friends use their ovens for storage rather than cooking during the summer months. Fancy a roast chicken? Buy it from the ‘asador’ rotisserie shop on the corner (very common in Spain).

Eat salads, buy ready cooked food rather than cooking it yourself. Even better, eat out. Away from tourist spots, bar food is pretty low-cost in Spain compared with the UK. Tapas and a cold beer or a glass of tinto de verano (chilled red wine with soda water and ice) are a wonderful way to cool down.

Live like a local

Get up early and do your exercise / chores / tourist stuff first thing. Retire to the shade during the hottest part of the day : from 1pm until late afternoon. Emerge once things start to cool down and, in the city, don’t even start start thinking about dinner until around 9.30pm. Spanish people tend to socialise until late and rest up during the heat of the afternoon when (almost) everything shuts down. It works!

get up early to avoid the heat
Getting up early to avoid the heat doesn’t always work: Seville, 8/9am.

Sleeping tips

Got a rooftop terrace in your property? Consider sleeping up there in the open air on the hottest nights, bugs and noise permitting. I have spent many nights sleeping al fresco during Seville’s summer season. Being so far south, the sun rises later than in the UK so daybreak does not come too soon.

If you have air con, switch it on before you go to bed to cool down the room before you enter, turn it up a couple of degrees once you’re in bed then set the timer for it to go off once you’re asleep. If you wake up hot, you can always re-set it then.

Take a cool shower before you go to bed and wet your hair. A cold, damp face cloth or hand towel on your tummy, chest or forehead is also extremely effective if you’re feeling hot and bothered in bed.

If you need a duvet, you’ve got the air con set too low.

Keep your cool

Slow down your pace, don’t over-face yourself with ambitious plans to get too much done and schedule in trips to air-conditioned locations like a department store, destination hotel, supermarket or museum. Pit-stops in the cool will help you cope with the heat.

Finally, however hot it gets, away from resorts, dress appropriately. Cool loose clothing will keep the sun off your skin and help air circulate around your body. In the summer months, you will not need a cardi / hoodie or jacket – save space in your luggage and don’t even bother packing one. Instead, take a light shawl or pashmina which packs away to almost nothing and is perfect to drape round your shoulders if you need to enter a church or fiercely air-conditioned environment.

Stand up for your workplace health

Whose job is it to improve the health credentials of our workplaces? The state, in a bid to ease the strain on our overstretched NHS? Employers, who reap the commercial benefits of healthier, more productive staff? Or should we the workers, for reasons of self-interest, stand up for our own workplace health?

Perhaps because no one can actually decide how to tackle the health time-bomb of sedentary working habits – or has the energy to do so? – we are sleep-sitting our way into a crisis of (literally) crippling proportions.

Inactivity: the cause of 20% of premature deaths

The extent of the problem was laid bare at this week’s Active Working Summit 2017. Expert speaker after speaker ran through the evidence:

  • nearly a fifth of premature deaths in the UK are due to physical inactivity;
  • more than 50% of staff working for the NHS (the nation’s biggest employer) are overweight;
  • the cost to the UK of poor workplace health is equal to the GDP of Portugal;
  • fewer than half of us are disability-free by age 50;
  • by spending seven hours plus a day seated we are suffering from muscle and joint issues that leave us frail and incapacitated.

The evidential case against workplace sedentary behaviour is clear. What researchers are focusing on too is how reducing those sedentary habits positively improves wellness and productivity. Early signs are good, and enlightened employers (and office design) encourage workers to stand up from their desks and get active around the office.

Move often, use mobile tech

The way to create active working is move often and carry mobile tech, ergonomics guru Prof Alan Hedge of Cornell University told the Active Working Summit. Younger workers get it, when their workplaces make it possible (take a walk through tech-co intensive Old Street and you’ll see this in action).

As Mayo Clinic Professor James Levine put it: “Active working is the coolest way to work. Barack Obama, the boss of Nike does it, Google, Facebook. These are cool places to work and they don’t want staff to be in their seats in one place all day long.”

‘We are being failed by the HSE’

So why aren’t corporate health and safety, occupational health departments in the vanguard of the active working movement? Gavin Bradley, the evangelical founding director of Active Working CIC, believes we are being failed by the HSE with its lack of recommendations for the use of adjustable desks. Workplace OH specialists generally only get involved once an employee has complained of a condition such as back or shoulder ache rather than taking the preventative approach.

We’ve got it the wrong way round, agreed Dr Nicola Eccles of Halifax-headquartered CP Active: “We shouldn’t be asking why aren’t you at your desk, but why are you always at your desk?”

So is it time for statutory guidance on active working? In Denmark, employers are legally obliged to provide sit-stand desks. It’s the law. The desks are there. Few workers use them. Gitte Toft, Danish inventor of the Steppie balance board blamed it on the lack of training, explanation and encouragement. Push rather than nudge just doesn’t seem to work.

Embed health in your business

Public Health England advisor Dame Carol Black agreed that legislation was not the answer, preferring options such as a voluntary register for employers. “Legislative policy follows the population,” she said. “Health and wellbeing at work cannot be an add-on: it needs to be embedded in a company.”

My take on this message – and one that I pass on to staff at companies I work with on healthy workplace practices: you work here, you deserve better, the ball is in your court. If you want a healthier working environment (and who wouldn’t?), you’ve got to demand it. Ask for the sit-stand desk riser, take regular breaks, become your department’s healthy workplace champion, put up posters, challenge your manager, stop eating lunch at your desk.

As Peter Brogan of the BIFM suggested at the Active Working Summit, the question that needs to get answered is: “Does your board even have a workplace strategy?”

Kickstart your healthy workplace campaign by signing up your team/department/company for On Your Feet Britain Day April 28, 2017: thousands are already signed up for a day of activity in the workplace in a bid to encourage the nation to #sitless #movemore, organised by Active Working CIC.

Join a running group to boost your training

I love running but when I go out on my own, I’m a plodder, grinding out the miles while listening to podcasts. Good for the mileage but does little to enhance my run performance.

Hill reps, intervals, power moves would all, I know, help build my speed and endurance, but they hurt. So if I’m going to incorporate them effectively into my running regime, I really need to have someone there making me do them – and making me do them properly. No cheating when it gets tough.

Run Together

The answer? Get a PT (costly solo solution) or join a running group (less expensive, more sociable). I opted for the latter, a new RunTogether group led by Wimbledon’s enthusiastic and inspirational health coach Anna Desogus, who I already know from my work on the @HealthyMerton healthy workplace programme. The group was set up in association with central Wimbledon yoga studio Jiva Health, so keep an eye out, as there may be some useful run + gait therapy + yoga sessions scheduled soon…

Find out more about Healthy Workplace services here

Runners' feet
Raring to RunTogether: high vis recommended on a frosty Wimbledon night

The first session took place last night. Anna kicked our training off with a 7pm safety briefing, then we took a slow jog to a safe cul de sac where we performed a series of power/strength moves: exactly the kind of thing I would never do when running alone. Duly warmed up, we head for a secluded residential area just off Wimbledon Hill for a hill reps session that challenged every one of us.

It was perfect: better runners could aim for more reps, while the less experienced/ambitious among us could go at our own pace, performing fewer circuits yet still pushing ourselves. No one was left behind, and Anna was super-effective in instruction and motivation. An hour later, we were all back in central Wimbledon for a final stretching session then home in time for supper. Brilliant.

Fancy joining Anna’s weekly Monday night RunTogether session? It caters for all levels of running (you must be able to run for at least 10 minutes), with a varied programme incorporating a dynamic workout as well as pure running, making it the perfect complement to your usual run sessions. Thoroughly recommend.

Find out more (and book your place): Anna’s Raramuri running group
Personalised nutrition, health, coaching services: Anna Desogus Health Coaching

Capital award for healthy workplace services

I was delighted to be presented with a special award by the Mayor of London’s office this week for being one of the capital’s most active and effective healthy workplace practitioners.

Nicola wins healthy workplace servcies award
Nicola receives healthy workplace award

In recent months, I have assisted six businesses and organisations in applying for and winning accreditation under the London Healthy Workplace Charter: a 100% success rate, and one which means the service I run is among the best in the city. My work continues, with more applications coming through from companies based in the London Borough of Merton (Wimbledon), where I am largely based, and now also further afield.

I am available to aid businesses across South West London and beyond in their attempts to both increase their healthy workplace credentials and apply for the official Mayor of London award if they wish.

Healthy Workplace accreditation

How does it work? An employer wanting to win Charter accreditation needs to put together a folder of evidence documenting its efforts and achievements in encouraging and enabling its staff to follow healthy, sustainable working practices. It also needs to assess its current credentials in the health and wellbeing fields, and identify areas where it can (and will) do better.

It is a process that means a business can genuinely boast of being a healthy workplace employer and enjoy the long term benefits of a more motivated, productive workforce as well as the shorter term (but ongoing) PR and marketing benefits of winning official accreditation under an independent, rigorous, bona fide scheme backed by Public Health England.

Let me help your business

My assistance makes the application process simpler, and is a way to introduce fresh ideas and contacts to help a business better support its staff needs and goals. Research shows that healthier employees are also more productive and motivated, work better together as a team and suffer less absenteeism as well as being better advocates for the business where they work.

Sounds interesting? Visit my workplace health page and get in touch to find out more: nicoladavenport22@gmail.com

Business taking steps towards a more active workforce

Staff at the Sit-Stand.com standing desk company are contractually obliged to take a 15-minute walk during office hours every working day.

It costs the company precisely nothing, but it is a healthy workplaces commitment to the principles of a business run by the founder of Active Working: to reduce the amount of time we spend sitting down at work.

And as CEO Gavin Bradley points out, once you’ve started your 15-minute walk-out, it will probably turn into more. Activity logged: job done.

Sitting leads to health problems

Evidence is constantly growing that staff who spend most of their working day seated are both less productive and more inclined to suffer health problems. Office workers sit on average 10 hours each day, and 70% of this sitting time is at work. The solution is simple: stand up and move around more. It’s not complicated, it’s not expensive, just good business sense.

No surprise, then, that during a 90-minute meeting with Sit-Stand.com‘s director Gavin Bradley, we were on our feet the whole time. A standing meeting with the offer of a freshly-blitzed smoothie: I love a company that practises what it preaches, and this one certainly does.

It’s all part of a growing recognition of the fact that employers who take measures to enhance the health of staff benefit from people who are more motivated and productive, less likely to suffer stress and absenteeism and act as positive advocates for the business.

So why don’t more bosses take simple steps such as encouraging staff to move around more, step away from their work stations at regular intervals and pay more attention to their personal health outcomes?

Is business culture changing?

It’s a business culture issue, but one that is certainly starting to change, as is evidenced by the increasing number of companies I work with who are recognising that supporting their workforce in making healthy choices does not have to be costly or time-consuming.

Workplace health-boosting measures can include steps as simple as moving bins away from desks so that staff are forced to stand and walk a short distance to dispose of rubbish, or encouraging greater use of stairs by posting inspirational Step Jockey style stickers beside the lifts.

The standing desk solution

Installing adjustable standing desks is becoming popular among employees, and is another relatively low-cost investment, with the entry level Sit-Stand.com Yo-Yo workstation costing well below £200.

In Denmark, 90% of employees have an adjustable standing desk. Health and wellbeing at work evangelist Gavin Bradley would love to see similar in the UK, and with his value range of adjustable sit-stand desks, PLUS his Active Working and Get Britain Standing campaigns, he is taking massive steps in helping move the world’s workforce towards a more active future. I’m in.

Find out more about how I can help YOUR business enhance its healthy workplace credentials

Wash Wizard cleans up on workplace workouts

wash wizard

Magic! Your workplace wash-mate

Workplace health and wellbeing is a big part of business for me at present, and encouraging staff to stay active through the working day is one of the ways in which companies can help build motivation and productivity.

But what if you’re not lucky enough to be in a building that offers showers for a post-workout freshen up? Picture the scene: you cycle to work, grab a lunchtime run or a midday gym session. Mind cleared, but body sweaty. No time or facilities to take a shower.

Options? Wet-wipe-wash or sweaty desk all afternoon. Neither is great for you or your workmates.

Good news! I just road-tested a third option, and it’s quick, discreet and – critically – effective. Wash Wizard is just perfect as a workplace post-workout clean-up. It’s a simple idea: a tightly-rolled sponge impregnated with sweat-busting aloe vera foam that takes up almost zero space in your work bag.

wash wizard

Wash Wizard: discreet and effective

Simply splash with water from your bottle to activate, swipe the bits that need freshening up, and you’re ready for the rest of your day. No need to rinse or towel dry, and it’s fragrance-free so suitable for both sexes.

At £7.99 for a pack of five, Wash Wizard is my latest affordable gymbag essential (brilliant for camping, sailing trips, overnight train journeys and festivals too).

Find out more about how your business can harness the  power of wellbeing at work to benefit both your staff AND your bottom line via our healthy workplaces service.