Promoting physical activity in businesses, in times of pandemic, is not always easy! In a large organization with multiple sites, communicating and coordinating these activities is a major challenge.
It is to discuss this subject that we met Éliane Leduc-Mathieu, responsible for the Healthy Enterprise standard at the Quebec Ministry of Transport.
Daniel: You are a certified company Healthy business; Can you tell us about the reasons that motivated you to seek this certification?
Éliane: We are in the process of certification. At the Ministry, we have 300 workplaces and we certified 11 last January and we are in the process of certifying 33 others.
The process is as follows: we take a survey, we make an action plan, we take our steps, then we are audited.
What motivated our authorities to embark on this process is to want to act on 2 aspects: prevention and retention / attraction of labor.
Daniel: You had nearly 500 participants in the 42 Day Business Challenge last fall; What a success! How did you get there? What's your secret?
Éliane: It depends on several factors. It is certain that we are close to 7, so that helps motivate several people.
This spring, we had several activities planned and the Corporate Challenge 42 Days was the first unifying and organized health and wellness activity since the start of the pandemic.
Being virtual, we were also able to reach out to our employees who are normally difficult to reach.
On our side, we also created a network on the collaborative tool Yammer; a social network of companies in which we brought the Défi Entreprises 42 days to life.
Daniel: How did you manage communications related to this Challenge?
Éliane: The Healthy Enterprise team has 7 employees located in Quebec. There are also multiplier agents. They are volunteers who are informed in advance and kept informed of future activities, conferences and actions that they may organize.
Under the Corporate Challenge 42 days, these people were invited to create Yammer groups and sub-groups within the Business Challenge to compile their data.
There was also a Yammer group open to all for service points that wanted to join it or that did not have a multiplier agent.
We also use emails because Yammer does not reach everyone. The tools will reach different types of people. We also have communications advisers who help us with the writing.
In addition, in service centers where workers work, electronic bulletin boards are used to synthesize information.
Daniel: Has the pandemic made the organization of your activities more difficult?
Éliane: I find that our authorities have been very proactive in managing communications. We received several communications, throughout the pandemic, from our authorities. The Microsoft suite was deployed quickly and team meetings were put forward.
Daniel: Are you starting to look like you're going with the pandemic? How has your work adapted?
Éliane: I must admit that it is difficult, because all the activities that I organized were unifying. We have to rethink everything. How to offer all the tools in a fair way for all? We had to develop new abilities, new skills.
Daniel: In a large organization like the MTQ, how are health promotion tasks distributed?
Éliane: Health promotion is everyone's responsibility.
In human resources, several teams deal with corporate health:
- The Healthy Enterprise team promotes health;
- The prevention team aims to reduce the risk of accidents and improve ergonomics;
- The Disability Management Team;
- The labor relations team;
- The team of psychological harassment respondents;
- Front-line human resources management advisers;
- The network of multipliers;
- The organizational development team;
- The communications team that supports us;
- The management which must be concretely involved in the changes and which must support the organized activities.
Daniel: How do you see the next 5 years in terms of occupational health?
Éliane: I see an incredible upheaval! I don't see a full-time return to work.
Above all, I think that psychological health has become much less taboo and I am convinced that it will give us a lot of leverage to promote health, well-being in companies and promote mental health.
