Belt-winning professional boxer turned award-winning businessman Tommy Coyle energised a select audience with advice on encouraging employees to ensure they can go the distance.
Hull's Commonwealth lightweight champion, now an undisputed regional expert in opening up health and wellbeing to workforces, was the headline act for a new breakfast event laid on by Business Live and city firm Reach Recruitment.
Mr Coyle outlined the four key pillars ‘eat well, move well, sleep well and think well’ - bringing healthy breakfasts from the family’s renowned city market stall with the aid of Nibble, and a pre-shift warm up to the exclusive party at Aura Innovation Centre.
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He gave an insight into his nationally-recognised work with Siemens Gamesa’s blade plant team, while putting his own insecurities on the line to illustrate the importance of looking after mind and body together.
“How charged are you?” he opened. “If you look at your mobile phone and it is on 33 per cent, you would charge it up. How charged you are affects your performance, it can affect decisions we make on a daily basis.
“If you eat well, move well and sleep well. Iit is likely you are going to think well.
Food isn’t just food it is fuel, and our performance in life - especially when I was fighting - requires a specific amount.”
Outlining calorie awareness, the Coyle Health and Wellbeing founder told how standard measures of 2,500 or 1,800 a day for men and women may not always apply.
“At Siemens Gamesa, one of the most physically demanding segments of the factory is the sanding of blades and repairing of them," he said. "These things are 106 of my steps long - some staff are doing 20,000 steps a day without thinking about it, then the physical tasks.
“Siemens Gamesa takes it very seriously. They know their employees are going to perform for the company.”
He warned of caffeine being a stimulant not an energy source, with the potential to take you lower when it crashes out of your system after the high, while recommending people drink alcohol when they want to, not when they need to - adding junk food, beer and wine - all in moderation - had its place in making us feel good, a vital strand of the holistic approach.
“If we don’t rest, we don’t recover and repair and we will never adapt, never get fitter, faster and stronger, never recharge our brain to go the next day,” he said of the importance of down time.
“To get the best night’s sleep we need the best wellbeing, and we need to make the best decisions every 24 hours.”
And while ambition can mean relentless drive in one direction, Mr Coyle passed on advice afforded to him too.
“We need to remember to look left and right, not just far in front,” he said, “We need to look at people around us, of our age, and realise we’re not doing too bad.
“The past is history, the future is a mystery, we need to take in the now.”
Business Live’s Humber editor, David Laister, had opened the event, aimed at human resources leads and senior managers in the area.
He said: “Wellbeing at work is certainly emerging as one of the hottest topics in a competitive labour market, and after the past few years it is entirely understandable.
“Those that take it seriously will undoubtedly attract and retain the best and brightest, and we’re fortunate to have an undisputed talent in our midst helping it happen.”
- Reach Recruitment has partnered with Business Live and Hull Live for this and the Hull Live Business Awards, to which entries are open now.
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