Tag: UK

Royal Mail Group today underlined its commitment to improving the health and wellbeing of its people through two new initiatives that will give them easy access to healthy lifestyle assessment and coaching services.

An online health checking and assessment service is being launched to enable the 180,000 people working for Royal Mail, Parcelforce Worldwide and Post Office Ltd to analyse their health and lifestyles and put in place improvement plans by accessing information on a range of areas, from nutrition to stress and exercise.

And the business is recruiting of a team of Health Trainers throughout the UK who will help fellow workers to improve their health through advice and practical support. Its work with the Department of Health in developing the Health Trainer scheme in the workplace leads the way for the implementation of Health Trainers by other UK businesses.

Royal Mail Group has been addressing the biological, social and psychological causes of absence and has introduced health and wellbeing policies on an unprecedented scale. Absenteeism at Royal Mail Group has fallen from seven per cent to five per cent in the past three years.

Initiatives have included:
• A group wide programme to reduce non-attendance and sickness absence focusing on management training and HR support
• Improving access and broadening occupational health support services to include physio and occupational therapy
• Communication and awareness raising programmes health promotion materials targeting smoking and back pain.

Post Office Car Insurance is advising UK drivers to take extra care on the UK’s roads as we enter a peak period of wild animal related road accidents.

Every year an estimated one million animals, including deer, foxes, badgers, otters and squirrels, are killed on UK roads, with many more suffering fatal injuries but crawling away from the roadside to die.

It’s not only animal lives which are at stake; it’s estimated that deer accidents alone account for over 500 personal injuries, including over 100 serious or fatal injuries. And costs for repairs to motor vehicles involved in animal collisions are estimated at over GBP 17m.

The Spring season signals the start of a peak period for road accidents involving badgers and Roe Deer – road accidents account for an estimated 100,000 deaths of badgers and deer every year. As we move into Spring, the Post Office is working with The People’s Trust for Endangered Species (PTES) and the Deer Initiative to raise awareness of how to avoid accidents with wild animals, and what to do in the event of a collision.

It’s not just country roads where drivers need to beware of wild animals crossing – each year an estimated 20,000 urban foxes are killed on roads in UK towns and cities.

Birds are also at risk with an estimated ten million killed on the roads each year. Three million are pheasants and for increasingly rare species such as barn owls, a worrying 3,000 juvenile birds are killed by motor vehicles annually.

According to the PTES’s ‘Mammals on Roads’ survey, rabbits account for up to half of overall animal casualties, with the following creatures also accounting for tens of thousands of road deaths:

• Foxes – 100K Estimated annual road fatalities
• Deer – 50K Estimated annual road fatalities
• Badgers – 50K Estimated annual road fatalities
• Hedgehogs – 15K Estimated annual road fatalities