Independent business advisers Cooper Parry are working hard to promote a healthy workplace internally, and launched a wellbeing scheme 18 months ago.

The ‘Looking after Number One’ scheme gives employees practical tools and information to improve their general wellbeing, and has been extremely well received by staff at its offices on Pride Park in Derby, as well as its bases in Nottingham and Leicester.

To date, the initiative has included ‘Wednesday Walks’, where team members are encouraged to leave their desks and do a planned walk at each office location on Wednesday lunchtimes, and a six-week Pedometer Challenge which saw free pedometers distributed to all staff. Teams of five competed with each other to rack up as many steps as possible, with progress plotted on Google maps each week.

The winning team completed 3,197,039 steps - which would have taken them to Italy – and, between them, staff who took part managed to walk more than 1,400 miles over six weeks.

A team from New Balance has also visited all of the Cooper Parry offices to do gait testing and give advice on running and the correct footwear etc, and staff have been offered a free trial and discounted rates for local British Military Fitness groups.

The wellbeing scheme also includes a web-based portal with information on all aspects of wellbeing including advice on nutrition and stress management, and as well as encouraging staff to become more active it also promotes healthy eating with a selection of fruit given out to all team members at least once a month.

Olivia Parrish, Cooper Parry HR Director, said: “Individual team members are also encouraged to take part in other sporting initiatives, and we currently have our own ladies netball team and five-a-side football team.  We also have quite a large group of marathon runners and keen cyclists, a couple of tri-athletes and a local table tennis champion!”

In recognition of its work, Cooper Parry has recently received the 2011 Bupa Workwell Award for Excellence and the Business in the Community’s coveted National ‘Big Tick’ for improving the health and wellbeing of its employees through its Wellbeing Programme.

The Big Tick awards recognise inspirational programmes that are making a positive impact on the community, the environment or wider society.

Jeremy Bowler, chief executive of Cooper Parry, said: “We hope to continue to create initiatives like this and make them a way of life at Cooper Parry. Aside from the obvious health benefits for our team we have seen significant business benefits in areas such as reduced absence.”

Cooper Parry also encourages other workforces to become more active, and sponsors the Business Team Challenge part of the annual Derbyshire Building Society 10k and the Corporate Challenge element of the Experian Robin Hood Marathon.