NHS pays bonus for staff standing up

February 21, 2017

Managers at Bedford Hospital Trust are urging workers to be healthier
The trust will be paid an extra £900,000 a year for wellbeing initiatives
Workers are being urged to cycle to work, change their diets and get the flu jab

Sophie Borland, Health Editor For The Daily Mail

Published:
20:33 EST, 17 February 2017

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Updated:
06:04 EST, 18 February 2017

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A hospital is being paid a bonus by the NHS for encouraging staff to stand up and walk around during lengthy meetings.

Managers at Bedford Hospital NHS Trust are urging workers to stand up after an hour has passed as part of a scheme to promote healthier lifestyles.

The trust will be paid an extra £900,000 a year for a range of health and wellbeing initiatives – which also include encouraging staff to join a gym.

Managers at Bedford Hospital NHS Trust are urging workers to stand up after an hour has passed as part of a scheme to promote healthier lifestyles (file photo)

Workers are being urged to cycle to work, change their diets, have regular physiotherapy and get the annual flu jab. According to documents uncovered by Health Service Journal, ‘all meetings lasting longer than one hour would require attendees to stand after an hour’.

Staff duly followed this advice during November and December board meetings. Minutes said that ‘all members stood up and continued with the meeting’.

Although this is believed to be the first initiative of its kind, it is part of a national scheme led by the head of NHS England.

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Simon Stevens wants NHS staff to lose weight, change their diets and ‘practise what they preach’ on healthy lifestyles. He hopes this will set a better example to patients and help staff take fewer days off sick. Figures show that as many as 700,000 of the 1.3million employees in the health service are either overweight or obese.

In November, Mr Stevens announced that he was also considering banning the sale of sugary drinks in hospitals.

A spokesman for Bedford Hospital NHS Trust, which employs around 2,200 full-time staff, said standing during long meetings was just one way of ‘building physical activity into working hours’.

The trust will be paid an extra £900,000 a year for a range of health and wellbeing initiatives – which also include encouraging staff to join a gym (file photo)

NHS England Central Midlands said policies to promote staff health were up to individual organisations to decide.

A spokesman for NHS England Central Midlands said it ‘does not set out nationally’ which activities hospitals should offer staff to improve health and wellbeing.

They added: ‘Specific activities such as standing during longer meetings will be for individual organisations to determine.

‘We have also encouraged the take up of offering physiotherapy services.’