Helping Active St Helens launch in workplaces

See how we partnered with St Helens Council Public Health and Sports Development as part of the Active St Helens campaign, to highlight the business benefits of moving more.

Read about the challenge, our role and the active difference this project has made. Plus hear participant and partner views.

The challenge

St Helens Council Public Health brought together a stakeholder group including MSP and local partners to look at designing a borough-wide campaign to promote increased physical activity levels. In addition to helping shape the overall campaign, MSP were asked to help promote the Active St Helens campaign in local workplaces; with 33.5% of the St Helens working-age population not meeting the minimum physical activity guidelines.

Our role

In February 2020 we worked with our partners in St Helens Council Public Health and Sports Development to deliver the inaugural Active St Helens Business Games. We booked St Helens Town Hall to host the event and worked with local providers and clubs including Sherdley Park Golf Club, Sutton Badminton Club and the Saints Community Foundation to host an evening of mini inclusive skills activities. We welcomed teams from St Helens based businesses including the Co-Op, Bachem, Rigby Civils, YMCA St Helens, Lucam Consultancy and St Helens Council, who all took part and benefitted from an opportunity to team build, network, try new activities and importantly let their hair down and have fun!

We also worked with various employers (including St Helens Council, St Helens CCG, Portico and Coral Products) across St Helens to train staff up as Workplace Physical Activity Champions, so that they could go back to their workplace and act as an extra layer of peer support to help spread positive messages about physical activity and encourage their colleagues to be more active and to move more whilst at work.

The active difference

  • 69 employees attended the inaugural Active St Helens Business Games – 56% of whom previously did not meet the minimum physical activity guidelines
  • After attending the Business Games, 91% of participants said that morale within the workplace had improved and 78% said that team working and communication had improved. 95% of participants are interested in carrying on some of the activities and sports that they tried on the night too
  • 67% of newly trained Physical Activity Champions reported increased confidence and knowledge in being able to promote physical activity to inactive colleagues within their workplace. An initial Champion training session was held, with more planned to be delivered when safe to resume post-COVID-19
  • Champions went back to their workplace to implement pledges that they set themselves – for example, one participant hosted an information session for colleagues to learn about being more active, and included fun activities to join in with such as table tennis. The Champion also started up some mini circuit training sessions in the workplace and now organise regular lunchtime walks for colleagues to join in with

Web Design by Twentytwo