Barbados Seminar To Discuss Wellness & Productivity

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – Barbadian companies wishing to build high performance organizations, increase productivity and safeguard corporate assets should look seriously at wellness promotion, a unique series of interventions to help companies manage the health of people at work and improve productivity.

That`s according to Lynette Andrew, chair of WellnessMax Inc. `In a survey we conducted in 2007, Barbadian companies cited absenteeism, supervisory skills, managing change, customer service and performance as the five top human resource challenges facing organizations,` said Andrew. `The position has not varied much over a ten year period. In a similar survey we conducted in 1997, 48% of respondents cited low motivation and absenteeism as the human resource issues that would require attention for productivity to improve.`

WellnessMax, a wellness promotion company, advocates workplace wellness promotion as a proactive management strategy that recognizes the relationship between people management practices and the profitability of an organization.

The company’s programs seek to incorporate lifestyle enhancing processes, policies, practices, environments, attitudes and activities, programs and incentives, into the way an organization does business in order to improve the health and well- being of people at work and create more efficient, productive and growth oriented organizations.

Business leaders, human resource and health and safety practitioners from Barbados and CARICOM countries will have the opportunity to learn more about the benefits of wellness promotion during a seminar presented by WellnessMax Inc. entitled, `Healthy People=Healthy Business,` which is scheduled to take place on May 16, at the Hilton Barbados.

The seminar will discuss the issues of the growing prevalence of obesity, chronic non-communicable diseases and other major health risk factors that are major contributors to high absenteeism, poor productivity and rapid increases in health benefit costs that continue to plague organizations.
The key presenter for the seminar is Dr. Geoffrey Frankson, a medical doctor with an M.A. in Human Sciences from Oxford University, U.K. and founder and CEO of Better Health Ltd, formed in Trinidad and Tobago some fourteen years ago. According to Dr. Frankson, `The main challenge is to get buy-in at the top of organizations, and I have found the personal dimension to be very useful in achieving this objective. Each participant will therefore be presented with a `Living Well Monitor` which we will work through. This is a tool developed at the Wellness Centre in Trinidad to facilitate the adoption of healthier lifestyles. The `Monitor,` in addition to our publication `Wellness Step by Step,` has proved very successful for executives who are seeking to manage stress and other health issues at both the personal and organizational level.’

Dr. David Estwick, Minister of Health, National Insurance & Social Security is expected to give the keynote address.