Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Abstract

The Bank of New Zealand (BNZ) has 5000 employees and is owned by the National Australian Bank (NAB). The Group (New Zealand, Australia, UK, USA, Asia Pacific) has around 50 000 employees. BNZ My Well Being Programme was developed as a respond to the increasing number of health issues, particularly associated with chronic illnesses and the ageing population. Bank wanted to reposition its health and safety outlook from compliance to one of managing its health risks. The programme started with identification of the health risks in workforce and education and establishment of the resources needed for the prevention programmes. Objective was to enable employees to modify personal lifestyle behaviour and to mitigate identified health risks in the future. The programme development started with the strategy planning, available data review followed by health questionnaires, workshops and customized web site to individual awareness and delivering the health information to wider NZ community. After four years of delivering diverse programmes, we repeated the health questionnaire and did a comparison to see what worked well, what not and where from here. Improvements and Return on investment was evident through the FTE sick days used, decrease in work and non-work related injuries, reduced turnover, and improved employee engagement. (ie. employee engagement score of 76%, improvement from 2009 of 68%; Average Sick Leave per FTE - 5.73 for year 2008 and 4.86 for year 2010) Challenges ahead: planning, delivering and monitoring of the wellness information to the wider community

Biography

Eta Lilic is a Health & Safety and Wellness Manager for the BNZ from 2006, working over 12 years in the health, safety and wellness fields (University of Auckland, Private Life Care Hospitals). She has a Diploma of Physiotherapy and a Postgraduate Certificate in Occupational Health from Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand. Eta is member of the National Australia Bank (NAB) Group Health & Safety Leaders forum; member of the NZ Leaders in Health and Safety, organized by NZ Department of Labour and a World Health Organization Consultant for the Healthy Workplaces initiative.