The Sanlam wellness programme offers free health & wellness screening to employees. This can be accessed by visiting any Dis-Chem, Clicks, or Pick n Pay pharmacy at any time (take your employee card and number with you, one visit per employee per year) – see here for more details. We also run a set of wellness days at offices around the country each year. These wellness days were held in May 2017.

  • 30 sites were visited.
  • 1993 employees visited and all had health screening done.

Everyone received a personal report and a wellness booklet. Most people also set at least one personal wellness goal – follow-up supporting emails and SMSs are being sent to everyone who set a goal.

Our medical schemes took part and generously provided much of the funding – sincere thanks to Bestmed, Bonitas, Discovery, Fedhealth, and Topmed. The events went off well so thanks are also due to the on-site teams and wellness champions who made this happen – it’s often more challenging than it looks!

The aggregated results continue to show a worrying profile with a great many people at risk due to weight (70%), lack of exercise (56%), smoking (17%), stress (12%), blood pressure (19%), cholesterol (17%), etc. More positively the impact that poor health has on productivity appears to be declining (13% better than in 2016), which is a positive sign. The relevance of wellness to individuals and to the business is clear.