Video: Employee Wellness Conference: Three lives saved after Chester Zoo embraced Heartstart

There are numerous free resources that organisations can tap into to improve health and wellbeing within their companies but at Chester Zoo embracing one in particular has literally proved lifesaving.

Speaking at the REBA Employee Wellness Conference 2016 Chester Zoo’s head of HR Jane Hubbard said that two days after staff at the zoo had attended HeartStart training (a free initiative in conjunction with the British Heart Foundation) a 12-year-old girl collapsed on a visit. “Her heart stopped for technically 45 minutes and if the team were there but hadn’t done Heartstart then she wouldn’t have been here today,” she said.

Instead thanks to the training the girl survived, returning to the zoo two weeks later with a pacemaker fitted.

Watch the Chester Zoo presentation (from 16:52) and Public Health England presentations in full.

“It was thanks to a chance conversation with an ambulance man who came in to do some defib training after they were installed onsite,” said Hubbard. “It’s simply two hours of someone’s time to understand how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation and you can also train your people to be instructors so we did that. We got people trained up and then started to train our own people and now 29% of our permanent workforce have been trained up in less than 12 months,” she said.

The training has also proved invaluable in the community too with two further people saved by staff out and about.

Hubbard urged delegates to make use of valuable but free resources such as Heartstart and also referenced the zoo’s work with Autism Together who initially visited Chester Zoo to raise awareness but ended up partnering with Hubbard and her team. 45 staff at the zoo have now completed autism champion training and the company is planning an autistic friendly day by the end of the year.

However, she also talked about other resources that whilst not free have boosted wellbeing at the company such as a choir that costs £100 a month.

Hubbard was speaking alongside Bill Taylor, head of operations, occupational health and staff wellbeing for Public Health England who outlined the types of resources available for companies to improve health and wellbeing within their organisations.

This video was filmed at the REBA Employee Wellness Conference 2016