Creating a Blue Zone Workforce

If you’ve never heard of a Blue Zone, they are areas of the world that have been studied extensively given the longevity and happiness of their residents. Some of the key findings that are consistent among these communities include having an active lifestyle, strong family and community ties, a healthy diet, and a positive outlook on life.

Taking the learnings from these different communities, we can think about how our daily lives and work lives compare. Since the people we surround ourselves with (physically and virtually) can have a significant impact on our own personal health, it’s important to consider our health not just as individuals, but as a team or larger company.

Consider how healthy your work team is. Are you all eating well, getting enough sleep, hydrating, keeping stress levels manageable, building a strong community and connection between co-workers, finding time for more movement in your day? It seems like a lot to focus on all at once, but when you take some time to think about your day and team, you can acknowledge which areas have the biggest room for improvement. When you know the right problems to solve, it becomes much easier to create effective solutions.

Our “Moving Beyond Ergonomics” workshop was developed with this in mind to help teams create awareness around the latest best practices in improving health in the workplace and to help teams develop strategies that can create real long-term changes from the larger community level. Working as a team we are able to normalize healthier habits and reduce some of the unhealthy and unproductive activities that are impacting employee energy levels, focus, productivity, and overall happiness and satisfaction with their jobs.

If you can make your workforce more productive, happy and reduce their risk for chronic health conditions and orthopedic problems in the long term everyone wins.

If this sounds interesting to you, reach out to me at jason@focused-physio.com and learn more about how we can help you and your team.

Resources:

Buettner D, Skemp S. Blue Zones: Lessons From the World's Longest Lived. Am J Lifestyle Med. 2016;10(5):318-321. Published 2016 Jul 7. doi:10.1177/1559827616637066

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6125071/