ALVANCE TEAM WALKING FOR HEALTH

Colleen MacLean

A team from the Fort William smelter were amongst nearly 900 people from across the world-wide GFG company in Australia, USA, Czech Republic, Italy to Alvance British Aluminium who formed 175 groups to take part in an eight-week challenge to walk 10,000 steps a day.

It has been proven that being active each day helps prevent chronic disease, as well as improving mood, concentration, and mental health. Most people spend a third of their working lives at work, and for many, a lot of that time is spent sitting. Combining busy work lives, commuting, social activities and home duties that don’t require us to be very active, we don’t often reach the recommended level of physical activity for optimum health and wellbeing.

The Fort William walkers were lucky, living and working in the Outdoor Capital of the UK, so were more able to get outside, and that there is a gym onsit for use when they weren’t mountaineering, running up Ben Nevis or taking a simple stroll. The health challenge encouraged team members to develop healthy habits to be active while having a bit of fun and friendly competition along the way, and the peer pressure from colleagues to keep the steps high also helped.

Team Lochaber ranked as one of the top teams within this global competition, managing to achieve over four million steps, the equivalent of walking from the site in Fort William to Athens (2,479.6 mi).

They did experience a refreshing amount of rain which they might have avoided if they were in Athens, but having an ultra-marathon runner in the team certainly helped.

Tom Uppington, managing director of Alvance British Aluminium said: “It is promising to be an exciting year ahead and the health and wellbeing of staff is what will continue to make the business a success.

“We are delighted to be able to offer a wider variety of benefits to staff, including but not limited to our latest offer to staff where possible a 4.5 day week. Studies show there are real benefits to this working pattern, for employees it offers greater work-life balance and for the business, increased engagement, retention and attraction. As the Social Committee plans events for the year ahead – the next walking challenge will be ‘Move it in March’, hopefully having Friday afternoons off can promote better health and wellbeing for the team.”

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