Tuesday 23 July 2019

How can a health and wellbeing strategy help you?
Whilst many employers are aware of the benefits of promoting health and wellbeing, it's often carried out on an ad-hoc basis. The difficulty with this approach is that it makes efficacy evaluation difficult, creating challenges when it comes to getting buy-in from those in control of the budget, and it can also lead to spiralling costs.
Health and wellbeing strategies are also often underpinned by a specific focus, for example reducing absenteeism. However, one of the key challenges is to go beyond this core objective and take a more holistic approach to employee health and wellbeing.
Below we outline some of the topics that a strategic approach to employee health and wellbeing can start to address:
Mental Health
Why do workplaces need mental health first aiders? Our research shows that 86% of UK employees believe their organisations are not doing enough to help them deal with work-related mental health issues. Mental ill health is the single largest cause of disability in the UK and 12.5 million working days are lost each year due to mental health issues. Read more.
Stress
Building resilience is one way to successfully manage stress. It gives us the ability to persevere and continue to function at a high level in times of adversity, despite failures, setbacks and loss. Here we take a look at 10 steps towards building resilience to cope with stress in the workplace and avoid burnout. Read more.
Sedentary Behaviour
British people sit for an average of 8.9 hours a day. Office workers are spending the majority of these hours sat at their desks, and research indicates that this poses a real health risk, irrespective of how active people are outside of work. This is why it’s vital to reduce sedentary behaviour and be more active in the workplace. Read more.
If you need any further information about our health and wellbeing offer for Chamber members please get in touch or visit our website.

Monday 15 July 2019

COBCOE Connects becomes Connects


TIAO Team is pleased to announce that, following the recently announced merger of COBCOE chambers with the British Chambers of Commerce, COBCOE Connects will change its name to “Connects” and formally hand over the support of chambers on the platform to TIAO on the 5th of July 2019.

This change enables us to bring together all the communities on the platform and make it easier for every member company to be visibly part of a wider global platform.

British chambers of commerce will appear under the new “UKGlobal” community.

We remain committed as ever to growing the platform – now 27 chambers and more than 11.000 members – to become the new global standard for business connectivity, repositioning chambers of commerce as the gateway to business success in the 21stcentury.

To ensure continuity in terms of expertise and capacity to support former COBCOE and other British Chambers on the platform TIAO has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Daniel Shillito[1], immediate Past President of the British Chamber of Commerce in Italy and former COBCOE Board Member, who will partner with TIAO in servicing Connects chambers, the UKGlobal community and their moderators on the platform, as well as in the recruitment of additional chambers. TIAO’s Karolina VainilkaitÄ— will remain the first point of contact for all chamber moderators.

We believe the announced changes will serve to further strengthen Connects and its UKGlobal community platform and we look forward to continuing to work together with BCC and all former COBCOE chambers to connect British chambers and their members around the world.



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[1] Daniel Shillito will partner with TIAO as a separate commercial entity, not as the British Chamber of Commerce in Italy or in his former capacity as its President.