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MENA: Over 90% of professionals say employers are responsible for health and well-being at work

Source: Middle East Insurance Review | Nov 2018

A great majority (93.2%) of respondents believe that it is the employer’s responsibility to promote health and well-being at work, according to a new survey by regional job site Bayt.com. In addition, nearly seven in 10 respondents place greater value on health insurance compared to a higher salary.
 
The ‘Health and Wellbeing in the MENA’ poll, conducted with 9,810 respondents in the region, showed a variety of insights about lifestyles of professionals and how employers can elicit a healthy change in the workplace. It aimed to gather opinions about the impact of work environments on the mental and physical health of members and the steps employers can take to foster workplaces focused on health and well-being.   
 
Health & wellness behaviour
Potentially preventable risk factors such as poor diets, high body mass index (an indicator of obesity and being overweight), and smoking are seen as contributors to unhealthy lifestyles of employees. The survey stated that 44% of respondents are smokers and 56% do not smoke, while 57.9% of MENA workplaces permit smoking on the premises, 19.7% have designated smoking areas and merely 14.4% prohibit it altogether. Almost 8% did not know what their company’s policy on smoking is.
 
The poll results indicated a growing trend of MENA respondents transforming their sedentary routines – 12.2% exercise regularly and follow a healthy diet, 8.4% have successfully changed their lifestyle and become more active, while 12.7% plan to adopt better eating habits and physical activity. That said, 95.4% of respondents said they would exercise more often if their workplace had a gym or offered subsidised gym memberships.
 
Critical components of workplace wellness
Working together to make changes is not only believed to benefit employees’ emotional and physical health, but also to improve the organisation’s overall productivity, the report said.
 
The results highlighted that employers can help reduce stress and develop a culture that fosters a healthy mindset in the workplace through dedicating time and resources to physical activity (71.1%), offering a flexible workplace environment (9.6%), organising social activities for the team (2.5%), encouraging healthy eating habits (0.9%) or all of the above (15.1%).
 
Working longer hours is associated with a range of health risks. The MENA region fares well in this area, with 86.9% of respondents reporting that their work schedule allows them to allocate time for physical exercise compared with just 8.9% employees whose work schedule does not allow them to follow healthier pursuits. 
 
The ability of workplace programmes to improve health outcomes cannot be overlooked. A majority of respondents (79.7%) said their employers provided health and well-being plans, workshops and educational sessions, while 13.9% reported that their workplace does not have such initiatives. Likewise, communication can help achieve physical and mental health goals. Most respondents (77.2%) are extremely satisfied and only 3.3% are dissatisfied with the level of communication that exists within their organisations.
 
Data for the poll was collected online from 2 August to 23 September 2018, and respondents were from countries including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Sudan. M 
 
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