The ATG Health Champions is an ambitious companywide initiative established earlier this year by ATG’s HR Officer, Harriet Roberts. The object of the scheme is to provide advice, help and encouragement in helping all staff to live a healthier lifestyle and to boost their physical and mental wellbeing.

Harriet was initially joined by Sarah Hill, Robert Edwards and Nat Westley to launch the scheme in February 2021 with each member of the team contributing a variety of healthy lifestyle topics. These have included tips on improving mental health, how to get a better night’s sleep, information on good nutrition and how to manage stress at work. Each month has had a core topic that is explored in more detail with regular correspondence emailed to all staff offering advice and support.

All well as providing essential information Team ATG have also been encouraged to get actively involved. For example, in March staff were asked to suggest healthy recipes that were then shared so that everybody could create their own wholesome dishes in the comfort of their homes. With over 25 delicious dishes submitted there were plenty to choose from. Some highlights included blueberry oat pancakes, lamb Burmese curry and tofu cashew nut stir fry. Click on the PDFs below for the full recipes.

Another highly interactive event was run in May with the Route 66 Challenge. This saw employees signing up to the Pacer app so their daily walking and running mileage could be logged. The idea being that collectively Team ATG would walk the virtual length of Route 66 – a trip that comes in at a serious 2,400 miles or 3,862 km. Over the 31 days a leader board on the app showed who was walking the most and what the cumulative total was. The Health Champions Team provided updates as key milestones were reached and how much further was required to meet the challenge. In short, the whole event was a great success with the combined total being logged by everyone coming in at impressive 2,499 miles or 3,998 km comfortably completing the challenge.

Another key event was a fantastic online session with Julian Hall from Calm People with all ATG staff being invited to take part. The session was focussed around stress and physical interventions with Julian providing some great facts about stress and then walking everyone through two physical techniques to help combat stress. These involved breathing techniques and a guided visualisation with both proving to be very effective. As well as the practical element it was a reminder of the importance of self-care, and how to watch out for signs of high stress and burnout. At the time, particularly important as the world continued to navigate through the pandemic.

After having served six months of offering some excellent advice Sarah and Nat are taking a step back to make way for the next member of the Health Champions’ team, which will be Claire Naylor. Claire joined ATG in June 2021 is looking forward to getting involved.

Robert is continuing for the foreseeable future and said,” I initially joined the Health Champions team to look at how I could improve myself and my lifestyle. Over the last six months it has been great seeing the responses and participation to our work so far this year. As for the future, we have a lot planned for the rest of the year which I am very excited about.”

Championing health is a very worthwhile endeavour. It’s great to see that at ATG it’s not only put front and centre, it’s been incorporated into daily activities both in and out of work.