Enabling people to manage their own health and work-life balance is important to us

In 2007 we gained first place in the ‘Best for Well Being’ category of the Sunday Times Best Companies awards.

A key initiative is our online ‘personal fitness trainer’ programme - Fitbug – which we launched in 2006. Employees subscribing to it get an online pedometer to track the number of steps they take each day. By the end of 2007, over 600 people had joined the scheme.

In 2007 we launched a new partnership with vielife in our call centres. This provides an online ‘health coach’ to assess people’s lifestyles, eating habits and sleep patterns. It is voluntary and entirely confidential and can be used from home.

However, the vielife programme provides us with some generic feedback on how we can tailor our well being initiatives to target areas of concern.

We already know from our occupational health data that up to 40 per cent of absence may not be attributed to medical disease. And we believe if we provide support and tools to people it can help them attend work more regularly.

Focusing on stress and exercise

Up to May 2008 6,000 customer service employees were invited to join our trials with vielife. Of those, 1,900 chose to have their health and well being assessed online.  vielife data shows that there are three areas where we can help employees improve their health: managing stress, improving nutrition and increasing physical activity.  We have also been alerted to a correlation between intermittent, short-term absence and the management of stress, sleep problems and a lack of exercise.
We aim to tackle absence trends by ensuring our well being initiatives take account of this learning. 

The vielife programme will be rolled out to the whole of Telefónica O2 UK during 2008.

We offer a range of free or subsidised tools. They include: Fitbug, vielife, Perks for O2 (including reduced cost of gym membership), flexible benefits such as dental insurance and support for the Government’s scheme to help people buy bicycles and cycle to work. We also provide chiropractic clinics and stress awareness workshops.

Finding a balance at O2

We are open to ideas that enable employees to manage their personal commitments, including flexible and part-time work and paid time off to pursue community roles such as school governorship, mentoring and other volunteering opportunities.

In 2007 we had total of 3,420 part-timers.

Nearly 600 people at Telefónica O2 UK have home working contracts, enabling them to ‘telework’ from home at least 40 per cent of the time.1 We encourage this option where it is appropriate.

Employees can also access the O2 Confidential Employee Assistance Programme.

O2 Confidential, our UK Employee Assistance Programme, offers a range of free personal services such as counselling, legal and financial advice and useful contacts for people with, for example, depression, marital problems, caring commitments and disability.

1 This figure represents the number of employees with a home-working contract .