Human
ResouRces
management
graduate certificate
Advance your human resources career with
Algonquin College’s Human Resources
Management Ontario College Graduate
Certificate program. Designed for
professionals who want to expand their
HR knowledge and work towards their
Certified Human Resources Professional
designation (CHRP) from the Human
Resources Professional Association (HRPA).
The program is available full-time online
or paRt-time online, choose the option
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“THERE’S LITERATURE TO
SUGGEST THAT IF YOU SIT FOR
MORE THAN THREE HOURS
A DAY, YOU INCREASE THE
RISK OF CARDIOVASCULAR
DISEASE AND EARLY DEATH.”
– DR. DAVID HARPER, CHIROPRACTIC
“We protect employees from obvious harmful environments,
such as chemicals, lifting or working from heights. Now we must
confront what science is clearly warning us about the epidemic of
sitting disease,” said Harper.
Strategies include education and awareness that goes beyond
disease avoidance and enters into prevention.
“It’s not so much about changing the work station as it is about
each employee becoming responsible for their own personal health
and safety. What is needed is the education, the activation and the
motivation in a supportive and collaborative team environment,”
said Harper.
Harper suggests considering using measurement tools such as
the Creating Wellness Assessment System to get personal and
corporate feedback to help identify risks so each employee may
address them with the support of the workplace.
Boniface recommends encouraging employees to take short,
regular breaks to stretch and move and making break reminder
software (with or without suggested stretches) available.
“Fostering health and wellness in the workplace goes a long way,”
she said. “Health and wellness accounts, regular lunchtime walks
and healthy lunches together are the kinds of things that demon-strate
that the workplace values their employees’ well-being.”
Other strategies include holding “walking meetings” instead of
piling into a conference room, standing or walking while talking
on the phone and considering alternate commuting options, such
as cycling or walking.
Harper is discouraged by The Heart and Stroke Foundation’s
warning that without immediate action, the average baby boomer
in Canada will spend the last 10 years of his life living with sick-ness
and disease. As a result, he works to provide computer-based
wellness assessment systems that he hopes will lengthen lives of
people through activity.
“Early death does not have to be your fate. We can realize a bet-ter
health outcome if we heed this warning and choose a different
path.” n
SPORTS AND OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND
CORPORATE WELLNESS SPECIALIST
HRPATODAY.CA ❚ JULY/AUGUST 2014 ❚ 49