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Release the pressure

 


Dragon Cafe in the City offers a space for City workers to unwind during or after the working day and release the pressure, in a welcoming and open space.

It offers a range of free activities, as well as lunch, snacks and refreshments and runs fortnightly on Wednesdays, between 12 and 7:30pm at Shoe Lane Library (EC4A 3JR).

The next session will be taking place this Wednesday, 3 July. This week's programme includes 15-minute massage, sessions on achieving work-life balance and storytelling, a Virtual Reality experience, yoga and much more.

Download the programme poster here and share with your colleagues and contacts. The website has also been revamped - www.dragoncafeinthecity.com

The award-winning Dragon Cafe in the City is funded by the City of London Corporation and delivered by Barbican & Community Libraries and Public Health, in partnership with charity Mental Fight Club.
Quote of the week:

Lone parents in employment in the UK has increased to 69% in the first quarter of this year, from 44% in 1996. "In the UK lone parents in low-paid jobs and those managing to maintain a better paid professional career face significant challenges". Employers offering flexible working hours "is key to helping single parents secure meaningful employment" - "Lone parents face a challenge to stay in work", Financial Times

Happy Hour



The City Corporation is inviting City businesses, workers and others to share their comments on its draft Alcohol Strategy, via an online consultation (open until 10 September).

The strategy aims to bring together the work that is undertaken locally to reduce alcohol-related harm, including among the City's 513,000 workers. It focuses on encouraging the City's different populations to safely and responsibly enjoy alcohol without compromising their own, or others' safety, health, or productivity.

The topic of alcohol in the workplace cuts across a range of business priorities, including diversity, equality and inclusion, health, safety and wellbeing, CSR and responsible business.

Please support this work by completing the consultation yourself and encouraging your workforce to do the same.

Building blocks

 

Volunteering opportunities are available to City workers, through the internationally-acclaimed artistic project, "The People's Tower", which is coming to the City of London this July.

The People's Tower is a participatory art project led by artist Olivier Grossetête forming part of the City of London's outdoor arts programme "Fantastic Feats: the building of London". It involves members of the local community - residents and workers alike - getting together across a series of workshops to construct something spectacular - a 20m-high tower made entirely of cardboard.

Across the week of workshops (15 - 19 July), participants will construct sections of the tower at the Barbican. On Saturday 20 July these sections will be transported to Guildhall Yard, where the community will again work together to assemble them and erect the finished structure. This will stay up overnight for people to view, before it is toppled on Sunday 21 July. Spectators will be invited to join in with its destruction - pulling the tower apart and trampling down the boxes.

This is a perfect and free opportunity for some team-building, or a creative way to unwind with friends or colleagues after work. "Giving" - which includes volunteering - and "Connecting" are two of the five evidence-based steps to wellbeing, along with "being active", "taking notice" and "keep learning".

To find out more about the weekday workshops, visit the website, or contact Alice Spalding at the City Corporation.

New on the Forum



A large retailer is looking for examples of best practice or insights from other large workplaces that have implemented initiatives to support female staff to express milk in the workplace. Share experience from your organisation through the Business Healthy Forum, or by emailing us here.

NCT provides recommendations and guidance on employers' legal duties to new mothers who are breastfeeding, which can be viewed here.
 
Coming up...
  • London Pride Parade (6 July) and Black Pride (7 July)

Pride is an important event in the annual calendar for London and the UK's LGBTQ+ community. The London HIV Prevention Programme (LHPP) is relaunching its flagship "Do It London" campaign to coincide with Pride weekend.

The campaign aims to:
- Announce the positive impact being made by Londoners using the ways to prevent HIV
- Call for continued efforts to achieve zero new infections through prevention methods
- Challenge stigma about testing and about HIV generally, particularly through sharing the "U=U" message (that those with HIV who are virally suppressed cannot pass the virus on to others, including sexual partners)

Information about sexual health services available in the City and beyond can be found here.

In December 2018 the City Corporation's Health and Wellbeing Board became the first to endorse the "U=U" consensus statement, addressing HIV-related stigma. Embracing U=U cuts across a range of core business issues, such as tackling discrimination, supporting equality, diversity and inclusion and workforce health and wellbeing, and responsible business.

This September, London will be hosting a global conference on HIV - the inaugural Fast Track Cities Initiative (FTCI) - at the Barbican Centre. To mark this special occasion, Business Healthy and the City Corporation's Public Health team are looking to host a fringe event, focused on engaging the local business community on this issue. If your business is located near to the Barbican Centre and is interested in hosting a breakfast session, please get in touch with us here.
  • Cycle to Work Day (8 August)
Cycling in the City of London has quadrupled in the last 20 years. Using two wheels to get around has great advantages for health, wellbeing and the environment, and can also save money when compared with commuting by public transport.

In the City, measures have been taken to make the roads safer for cyclists, including rolling out a 20mph limits on all roads and connecting the street network to the capital's Cycle Superhighways and "Quietways". Many one-way streets are designed to allow cyclists to cycle against the main flow of traffic.

The City of London Corporation works with City businesses through its Active City Network and Business Healthy, to support and encourage City workers to take up cycling - both as a form of transport and as a form of exercise.

Businesses located in the City and their workers can benefit from free services offered by the City Corporation. These include:
  • Dr Bike services: free cycle maintenance, checks and advice, as well as general road-worthiness tests and minor repairs.
  • Cycle maintenance courses
  • Cycle Skills training (one-to-one sessions for basic, urban and advance cyclists, as well as family sessions)
Find out more here.

Think Diabetes



According to the Health Innovation Network (HIN), in 2017 and 2018 more than 3.1 million people in England were diagnosed with Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes. It is estimated that in London over 671,000 people of working age are living with this life-changing condition.

Uncontrolled diabetes can create co-morbidities, such as vision loss, and can lead to a poor quality of life. Understanding the condition and how to manage it is crucial; structured education for those with diabetes is a recommendation of the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and is clinically proven to help individuals to self-manage their condition. The sessions also offer peer support, however many are unable to attend, with getting time off work a commonly-cited barrier.

The HIN has published a report outlining this issue and including a set of recommendations for employers on how they can support their staff to take advantage of the education advantages available to them, or even provide on-site education for staff themselves.

Access the "Think Diabetes: Supporting a cultural shift in the workplace" report here.

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Business Healthy is funded and delivered by the City of London Corporation's Public Health team, supporting the City Corporation's statutory obligations to ensure the health and wellbeing of the almost half a million people who work in the Square Mile each day.

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