GUEST BLOG by Mark Harvey: Parker- Clear Leaders in Employee Wellness!

Parker is a multinational company with over 58,000 employees worldwide and employee health and safety in the workplace is of primary importance. Parker has developed a series of initiatives aimed at promoting employee health, driven by Human Resources under the banner of Wellness, of which encouraging employees to drink more fresh water is key.

It is well recognized that the majority of adults drink insufficient water and should, throughout each day, drink up to 2 litres of water to stay hydrated. Moreover, drinking un-sweetened water helps cut intake of other less suitable liquids such as sugary, soft drinks with obvious health and dental benefits!

This specific initiative is so important to Parker that top management directly sponsor filtered drinking water solutions by employees in the workplace. The Parker Hiross Zander division, based in Padova, Italy, has been charged with promoting the installation and use of water fountain and drinking bottle systems for the 15,000 employees in over 100 sites in Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Access in the workplace to fresh, filtered water by employees is critical to encouraging drinking water. However, reducing plastic waste is also critical to Parker so we do not want to use water dispensers with large water bottles nor encourage the use of disposable plastic cups. This is why we have created a package of water fountains with built in filtration, which are to be piped to the mains water supply, combined with dedicated employee drinking bottles to provide an ecological drinking water system.

Access means that each Parker site is being encouraged to place water fountains where their employees actually work, in areas of frequent employee use, and not just in the canteen and next to the coffee machine. Site layout and employee working concentration defines where and how many fountains are needed!

Multiple filtered drinking solutions!

We have five versions available to allow sites to match versions to local country tastes and needs and all have built in active carbon and sediment filtration and Ultraviolet lamp anti-bacterial systems. For example, we have found that in our German sites the sparkling water (CO2) fountain is very popular whereas in our UK sites the HOT water fountain is very popular for making tea and other hot drinks.

For standard use we have a cold water and ambient water version and we also have a similar version without an internal tank to simplify maintenance. In case of no clean public water supply being available we have a reverse osmosis version. We also have an under the counter filtration system without refrigeration for use with kitchen sinks and there are stand alone filters to combat hard water and bacteria.

We also use a Timestrip enabled three month Parker service reminder key-fob for use with activated carbon filters and to encourage optimum hygiene of our Parker filtered drinking water fountains through quarterly filtration service calls using our unique Parker service reminder.

Hygiene: filtration changes!

Optimum hygiene is promoted through quarterly filtration service calls through the use of our unique Parker service reminder (right) which uses Timestrip technology based on ambient temperature and no batteries.

Reduce waste, improve health!

By making water convenient and easily accessible we are increasing the likelihood of employees consuming fresh, un-sweetened water. Paired with our Parker branded range of BPA-free plastic, transparent and fun to use 500ml water bottles, employees have a sustainable way of continually drinking water throughout the day.