Education

The Global
Corporate
Challenge
(GCC)
The department provided a 50% subsidy for 602 staff
(86 teams) to participate in a 16 week physical activity
challenge commencing on 23 May 2013 and concluding
on 12 September 2013. This is the largest ever number
of department employees participating in the program.
Participants use the technology provided to detect
movements every day during the 16 week challenge and
enter their steps or activity (such as cycling or swimming)
in the GCC web portal. The aim of the challenge is
for participants to do 10,000 steps a day which is the
recommended daily average set by the World Health
Organisation for a lifestyle to be considered active.
Participants also receive access to the GCC website for
12 months which provides valuable information on healthy
eating, physical activity and general health and wellbeing.
Bupa
Corporate
Health Plan,
Health Kiosks
and Site Visits
The department has an agreement with Bupa to offer a
Corporate Health Cover Plan to all employees. This plan
provides staff, who elect to join, with a corporate rate
of private health cover and access to a range of member
benefits. Bupa is provided with access to worksites to
provide information sessions to staff about the plan as
well as occasional additional services such as ‘health kiosk’
individual health assessments. Some 17 site visits were
conducted around the state in this reporting period.
The Bupa arrangement provides the opportunity for the
department to access 1% of all contributions via a wellness
fund that can be used to purchase Bupa health and
wellbeing programs and activities.
Employee
Assistance
Program
(EAP)
Positive Solutions (the department’s EAP provider)
conducted awareness sessions across the state at the
request of individual workplaces. It was found that
where the session was requested, the workplace
sometimes required onsite follow-up counselling or a
group facilitation session.
Flu
vaccination
program
The department once again offered a free influenza
vaccination program to all staff and a total of 4,584
employees were vaccinated at 183 sites across Tasmania.
This represents an increase of 15% in the number of staff
vaccinated in the previous reporting period.
Intranet
resources
The department’s ‘Healthy@Work’ Intranet page was
redesigned providing access to a diverse range of health
and wellbeing related resources to all staff.
Workplace
Toolkit
Skills Tasmania, LINC Tasmania, the Polytechnic,
Dodges Ferry Primary School and Norwood Primary
School participated in the pilot program for the
development of the Healthy Workers Toolkit Project in
partnership with Population Health – Department of
Health and Human Services. The toolkit will be launched
across the department later in 2013.
66 Required Reporting » Employment