Feeling tired and run down or at loose ends? Need a boost?

Now you can feel better, earn points and get neat stuff by being active, losing weight, quitting smoking, volunteering or participating in office activities. The Forest Service Health and Wellness Program can help you achieve your goals.

The program encourages participants to maintain a healthy, active lifestyle and conduct activities to improve staff morale and personal fitness.

A provincial committee, made up of co-ordinators from each region, can give you ideas, act as facilitators, and provide assistance and encouragement.

There are two categories for participating and collecting points: Office Morale and Personal Fitness.

Office morale category participants get points for organizing or participating in office events such as staff luncheons and for after-hours volunteer work.

Participants in the personal fitness category can earn points for quitting smoking, achieving and maintaining a target weight, and for various levels of physical activities such as rock climbing, rowing, running, curling and walking.

Once you’ve collected a certain number of points you will be rewarded with good quality merchandise such as water jugs, first aid kits and gym bags.

An example of how you can collect points: If you quit smoking for three months you can collect 50 points. Quit for six months and you get 75 points. If you walk to work every day—30 minutes round trip—you can accumulate about 160 points in a year. And get another 20 points for organizing a staff social. Altogether this is about 250 points for a lifestyle change that can be easy to do, easy to maintain, easy to fit into a tight schedule and will certainly improve your health and well-being.

Employees can also form teams across branches and programs and, combining their points, compete with other teams in a contest for a trophy and the ultimate satisfaction of having the healthiest group in the ministry.

In 1994, the B.C. Forest Service launched its Health and Wellness Program in the Penticton District. Now more than forty offices have these programs with about 2,200 participants.

Two Forest Service offices analyzed their programs’ effectiveness over one year and discovered that:

• 77 per cent of staff in the program said they felt better and had less illness-related absenteeism
• 55 per cent said they felt good about their increase in productivity
• Most agreed this program helps to improve office morale

During this analysis, one office accrued 279 fewer hours of illness-related time off, which is a personal health benefit and also helps other staff in the office.

So, walk or cycle to work, dust off your basketball or skipping rope, organize a staff barbecue or volunteer with the Junior Forest Wardens. But first, visit the ministry Web site for more information at gww.for.gov.bc.ca/pab/wellness/index.htm

gww.for.gov.bc.ca/pab/wellness/index.htm