Sealing products and legal requirements - Parker Hannifin ...

Healthy employees
– healthy company
Above and beyond providing safe
and healthy workplaces in compliance
with relevant laws and regulations
modern, forward-thinking
companies have active employee
health promotion programmes.
At the Parker Seal Group such programmes
have been an integral element
of the organization’s culture
for many years. After successful
kick-off events of the company’s
“health management” in 2004 and
2005, the plants in Bietigheim-
Bissingen and Pleidelsheim,
Germany, each devoted a day to
promoting employee health this
September.
An ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure. This old adage is taking
on increasing importance in this
day and age. Naturally, besides easing
8 SealingReport · November 2011
the burden on health systems and the
resulting benefits for society at large,
individuals who make an effort to
prevent sickness as far as possible by
adopting a healthy lifestyle benefit
from higher quality of life. For obvious
reasons, businesses, too, are interested
in keeping their employees
healthy. This interest goes far beyond
“sickness absence rates” as a directly
measurable cost factor. Both the
physical and mental performance
capabilities of employees have a
crucial impact on the overall performance
of any organization, and thus
its business success.
While in the past the main focus
tended to be on physical strains at the
workplace, psychological factors are
playing a more and more important
role today as well. Many people perceive
the increasingly fast pace and
complexity of
today’s business
world – but also
their private
lives – as stressful.
Added to
this are the typical
factors of a
modern – and
often unhealthy
– lifestyle, such
as an unbalanced
diet and
perhaps smoking
or excessive
consumption of alcohol, caffeine or
other stimulants. Stress that is perceived
as negative may even intensify
such harmful behaviours.
“Therefore, promoting awareness of
the benefits of a health-conscious
lifestyle which, in addition to nutrition
and fitness, includes coping
with stress is a central topic of our
comprehensive approach to health
management,” says Steffen Preiß, HR
Manager of the Bietigheim plant. As
early as in 2004 a “Health Day” was
held to kick off a programme billed
as “Prädifa in Motion”. Since then,
the programme has been continually
pursued and developed further.
Long-standing activities like a regular
“joint run” or the annual bicycle tour
covering hundreds of kilometres that
took place for the first time in 2009
prove that the employees have taken
the programme’s motto quite literally.
In 2009 the Prädifa cyclists went to
the Czech plant in Sadská, in 2010 to
the Belgian plant in Boom (2010)
and this year to Parker’s new European
headquarters in Etoy on Lake
Geneva. Obviously, the participation
in joint sporting activities not only
promotes the individual’s physical
wellbeing but also fosters relations
amongst colleagues and thus positively
affects morale and workplace
climate.